# Ecological Validity and STM Research

The laboratory environment in which most STM research takes place puts certain pressures on the experimental participants. For example:

- They are in an unfamiliar enviroment, and do not know what to expect
- They are anxious about how they will perform on the experimental task
- They may be worried about the opinion the researcher has of them

These factors affect both the person's motivation, and their ability to focus on the task they are asked to do. As a result, the way they perform on memory tasks in the laboratory may be rather different from their performance under normal conditions. In other words, the ecological validity of research like Miller's and Simon's is low, and their research may tell us relatively little about how people's STM usually works.

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Basic level content | Start | Digit span measures of STM | Recency measures of STM | Test your learning
Intermediate level content |  | Research using digit span measures | Research using recency measures |
Advanced level content |  | Ecological validity and STM research | Sampling validity and STM research |