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The primacy and recency effect (the tendency to remember words at the beginning and ends of lists) is evidence in support of the MSM. The following has been adapted from IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide Evidence for MSM: Serial position effect (primacy and recency effects)The serial position effect (aka primacy and recency effect) is a cognitive phenomenon whereby people tend to remember the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a series. This provides evidence for the MSM: people tend to remember the first items because they have longer to rehearse the information and they may have paid more attention to it, so it has a higher probability of being transferred to the LTS. They tend to remember the most recent information because it is still in their STS. Information in the middle may be lost because of the limited capacity of the STS. This can be shown in Glanzer and Cunitz’s famous study. A common method used to investigate memory is using free recall. This is when participants are exposed to a list of words (e.g. listening to a tape recording of words read out) and they are then asked to write down in any order (free) as many words as they can remember (recall). Using this method, researchers detected a pattern: participants can remember words better when they appear at the beginning of a list and at the end of a list. This has been dubbed the serial position effect (aka the primacy and recency effects). Glanzer and Cunitz proposed that this was because the memories were coming from two different stores – the STS and the LTS. In order to demonstrate this, they conducted a series of experiments involving memory tests. One of these experiments used 46 enlisted army men who were shown word monosyllabic words from the Thorndike-Lorge list on a screen using a projector. The experimenter read the words as they appeared also. The researchers used a repeated measures design by testing subjects individually and randomly assigning the word lists to one of the three conditions. The three conditions were:
Like Peterson and Peterson’s study, participants had a distraction task during the delay and had to count backwards in 3s to prevent further rehearsal. The results showed that when there was no delay in recall (IFR) the primacy and recency effect was demonstrated as per usual. (Re-read above to see how this supports the MSM). However, in the DFR-30 group only the primacy effect was present and the longer the delay, the more reduced was the recency effect (see graph below). This is further support for the MSM because it shows that the rehearsal has not changed the transfer to the LTS (because the primacy effect still exists), but the recency effect has gone because there was no time for rehearsal (because of the distraction task) and the 30 second delay was longer than the short-term stores capacity so the memories decayed (were lost). You can see that as the delay increases, the recency effect disappears but the primacy effect remains. This provides further support for the MSM as it shows the duration of the STS is limited and that information rehearsed can be transferred to the LTS. It’s interesting to note that these experiments were conducted before Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed the MSM, so these experiments may have inspired the theory, not the other way around. References Glanzer, Murray, and Anita R. Cunitz. “Two Storage Mechanisms in Free Recall.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5.4 (1966): 351-60. Web. (Link to full study)
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator. Which term refers to the tendency to recall the item at the beginning and at the end of a list more readily than the items in the middle of a list?In simplest terms, the primacy effect refers to the tendency to recall information presented at the start of a list better than information at the middle or end. This is a cognitive bias that is believed to relate to the tendency to rehearse and relate memory storage systems.
What term refers to the tendency to recall words heard first?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 primacy effect; that at the end of the list, the recency effect.
What refers to finding that memory is better for things at the beginning and the end of a list as compared to memory for things in the middle of the list?Primacy effect: refers to our tendency to better recall items at the beginning of the list. Both will be apparent immediately after reading the list, but the items at the beginning of the list will be remembered longer.
What is primacy and recency effect with example?The primacy effect is connected to the recency effect — the fact that we recall the latest information better. For example, in competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest and ice skating, it was found that higher marks were given to competitors who performed last De Bruin (2005).
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