Serial Position Effect Definition Psychology

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By Saul McLeod, published 2008

Some of the strongest evidence for the multi-store model (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) comes from serial position effect studies and studies of brain damaged patients.

The serial position effect refers to our tendency to be able to recall the first and last items on a list better and the middle items worse. Psychology Hermann Ebbinghaus noted during his research that his ability to remember the items on a list depended on the position of the item on the list. What Is the Serial Position Effect? The Serial Position Effect is the psychological effect that seems to happen when a person recalls the first and last items in a list more often than the middle items. For example, let’s say you have a list of information. We can use a grocery list for this example. You have milk, eggs, butter, hummus, and carrots.

Experiments show that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list.

This is known as the serial position effect. The tendency to recall earlier words is called the primacy effect; the tendency to recall the later words is called the recency effect.

Effect

Murdock (1962)

Procedure

Murdock asked participants to learn a list of words that varied in length from 10 to 40 words and free recall them. Each word was presented for one to two seconds.

Results

He found that the probability of recalling any word depended on its position in the list (its serial position).Words presented either early in the list or at the end were more often recalled, but the ones in the middle were more often forgotten. This is known as serial position effect.

The improved recall of words at the beginning of the list is called the primary effect; that at the end of the list, the recency effect. This recency effect exists even when the list is lengthened to 40 words.

Conclusion

Murdock suggested that words early in the list were put intolong term memory (primacy effect) because the person has time to rehearse each word acoustically. Words from the end of the list went into short term memory (recency effect) which can typically hold about 7 items.

Words in the middle of the list had been there too long to be held in short term memory (STM) (due to displacement) and not long enough to be put into long term memory (LTM). This is referred as a asymptote.

In a nutshell, when participants remember primary and recent information, it is thought that they are recalling information from two separate stores (STM and LTM).

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)

Procedure

Glanzer and Cunitz presented two groups of participants with the same list of words. One group recalled the words immediately after presentation, while the other group recalled the words after waiting 30 seconds. These participants had to count backwards in threes (the Brown-Peterson technique), which prevented rehearsal and caused the recency effect to disappear. Both groups could free recall the words in any order.

Results

The words at the end of the list are only remembered if recalled first and tested immediately. Delaying recall by 30 seconds prevented the recency effect.


References

Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In Spence, K. W., & Spence, J. T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.

Glanzer, M., & Cunitz, A. R. (1966). Two storage mechanisms in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5(4), 351-360.

Murdock, B. B. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(5), 482–488.

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Serial Position Effect Psychology Quizlet

McLeod, S. A. (2008). Serial position effect. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/primacy-recency.html

Serial Position Effect Definition In Psychology

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