Primacy and Recency effect

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Usama Abdullah Khan

Abstract

The aim of this investigation was to investigate Glanzer and Cunitz theory of the Primacy and Recency effect that the first few words and the last few words in a list of will tend to be remembered and recalled more than the words positioned in the middle of the list. Glanzer and Cunitz found from their experiment that the first few words were recalled because of, the middle words were not recalled well because they had been displaced by the incoming words and the last few words were recalled well because they were still present in the short term memory.

A controlled experiment was used with a repeated measure design and the sampling method that was used to carry out the experiment was opportunity sampling, which included 20 participants who were all students at St. Mary’s College, Blackburn. The participants ranged between the age group of 16-18 year old students. Participants were asked to carry out a free recall task which included a word list with 30 words and they were given the word list to look at for a minute and then asked immediately to recall as many words as they could remember in any order.

The results found showed that the Primacy and Recency effect had occurred as this was shown in the mean recall rate calculated. The Primacy meaning the first ⅓ of the words from the word list (1-10) had a mean recall rate of 7.9. The second ⅓ of the words from the middle of the list (11-20) had a mean recall rate of 5.5. Finally the final ⅓ of the words from the list (21-30) had a mean recall rate of 9.4.

From the results of this experiment, it was concluded that the experimental hypothesis was accepted which stated: The first 10 words of a list of 30 (positioned 1-10) and the last10 words (positioned 21-30) of a list will have a higher recall than the middle 10 words (positioned 11-20). Which meant that the null hypothesis was rejected which stated: there will be no significant difference in the words recalled wherever the words are positioned in the list where they are the first 10, the last 10 or the middle 10 words. Any difference will be due to chance.

In relation to this experiment it was concluded that the positioning of the words in a list has an effect on the recall of those words from the word list as the first few words and the last few words were remembered and recalled more than the middle words. This shows that the Primacy and Recency effect did occur.

Introduction

Memory is the storage of information in our mind, it refers to the mental processes that are used to encode, store and retrieve information. The encoding of information occurs in different forms such as visual, semantic, smell and auditory. Storage refers to the amount information that is held in memory. Retrieval refers to the processes by which information is produced from memory and retrieval includes the recall, recognition of information.

        The multi store model was derived by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), the multi store model also known as the dual memory model because of the emphasis on short term memory and long term memory, investigated and explained how information flows from one storage system to another. The multi store model consists of 3 structural components; the sensory stores, short-term memory store and the long-term memory store.

        Sensory stores which include vision, smell, and hearing e.t.c. The receive information from the environment and then the information is held briefly in which some information is processed into the short term memory.

        Short-term memory is a temporary place for storing information and also in the short term memory store there is only limited processing. Short-term memory store has a limited capacity of only about 7items that can be stored at a particular time due to the limited duration and the storage of information can be lost with some sort of interference. Also with rehearsal some of the information is transferred into the Long term memory store which has a greater and permanent storage of information rather than the short term memory where the information can be lost if unattended. Primary effect is due transfer of the words to the long term memory store through rehearsal and the Recency effect was due to still the words being in the short term memory store.

        Peterson and Peterson study (1959) investigated a group of participant where no rehearsal was done after the viewing of the words; Peterson found that the STM has a limited duration which supports the multi store model where the Long term memory store and the short term memory store are 2 distinctly diverse types of memory.

        Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) investigated the primary and Recency effect which also supports the multi store model where they gave the participants; one group to recall the words straight away whilst the other group to recall the words after 30secs delay and he found out that the participant tended to remember the first few words known as the primary effect and the last few words which are known as the recency effect. Glanzer and Cunitz theory (1966) also supports the multi store model, which shows that the participants remember the first few words, which is due to rehearsal and the information passed onto the Long-term memory store whereas the last few words were remembered due to the information stored onto the Short-term memory store.

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        Free recall experiments where the subjects are given a number of words and then asked to recall them in any order and the results fall into a pattern known as serial position curve or the “U curve”. Basically the “U curve” shows that the participant will show greater recall of words at the beginning and at the end whereas the middle part will show lower level of recall.

Free recall was investigated by Murdock (1962) where he presented a group of participant with 40 words, he found out that the participant tended to remember the first few words and the ...

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