Serial Position Effect IN Short TERM Memory PDF

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Serial Position Effect IN Short TERM Memory lab report...

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1 SERIAL POSITION EFFECT IN SHORT-TERM MEMORY LAB REPORT By (Name) (1424 words)

Course Name Instructor Name of the University City and State Date

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Abstract The aim of this experiment was to test the serial position effect in the short term memory. The theory suggests that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the words at the beginning and at the end of the list more than the words at the middle. We replicated past experiments in this study by reading out a list of words to participants and letting them write down the words they remembered. The results showed that the participants easily recalled the words at the beginning and at the end of the list more than at the middle. Introduction The human being memory is classified into two major categories that is short term memory and long term memory. Short term memory also known as primary or active memory, according to (Cherry, 2021) is the capacity to store small quantities of information in the brain for short duration of time while long term memory refers to the capacity to store information over an extended period of time, usually years The multi- store model for memory proposed by (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) suggests that there are three separate memory stores namely the sensory memory, the short term memory and the long term memory and that information can be transferred between these stores in a linear manner as in figure 1 below. However, each of these memory store is a unitary structure that has its own characteristics in terms of encoding, capacity and duration (Mcleod, 2021).

Figure 1: Linear Transfer of information between the three memory stores

The sensory memory store has a duration of a quarter to a half of a second. This memory store receives information from the five senses that is sight, smell, touch, sound and taste and this information can be transferred to the short term memory if a person’s attention is focused on the sensory store. On the other hand, the short term memory has a duration of up to thirty seconds. However, the duration of the short term memory can be extended

3 beyond 30 seconds by the process of maintenance rehearsal which refers to the process of verbally or mentally repeating information in order to remember it. Some of the strongest evidence for the multi- store memory is the serial position effect for short term memory. This effect describes how our memory is affected by the position of information in a sequence. Previous experiments show that when, presented with a list of words, participants tend to remember more words at the start of the list due to rehearsal and at the end of the list are recalled first. Words in the middle of the list are not recalled as much since the short term memory has been filled up. The ability to recall the earlier words is called primacy effect while the ability to remember the last words is called recency effect as in figure 2 below.

Figure 2: The serial position effect graph

We conducted a study that replicates past experiments of the serial position effect in short term memory. Method Participants The participants of this experiment were 27 students between the age of 18 and 35. They undertook the experiment as part of a laboratory course Materials The main stimuli for this experiment a set of 48 words that were put in 4 lists. Each list contained 12 words. Each participant was supposed to have a writing material and a piece of paper before the experiment started.

4 Procedure The lecturer read out the 12 words from one list to the participants. He then said “go” and the student wrote down the words they remembered from the list I whatever order. Words that were recorded in the right position were denoted a “1” in table 1 below and words that were recorded in the wrong position were denoted with “0” in table 1. This procedure was repeated for list 2, list 3 and list 4. The participants then submitted their lists of the recalled words to the lecturer who combined the results into one excel file for analysis of the serial position effect. Word list 1

Word list 2

Word list 3

Word list 4

Position 1 Position 2 Position 3 Position 4 Position 5 Position 6 Position 7 Position 8 Position 9 Position 10 Position 11 Position 12 Table 1: Data collection sheet

The word list included the following words Word list 1 Rabbit Potato Garden Square Tennis Flower Elephant Club Jacket Rainbow Pear Pillow Table 2: Word lists

Word list 2 Pineapple Couch Tiger Chair Sun Unicorn Airplane Badminton Rhino Apple Baseball Rat

Word list 3 Movie Joker Joey Tortoise Angry Shouted Shed Engineer Crocodile Telephone Mat Shoulder

Word list 4 Mango Bandit Rotten Sunglass Windscreen Brother Denim Cricket Swollen Branch Bakery table

5 Results The measured variable was the number of words that were recalled for each position on the list. The mean and standard deviation was found for all participants in the class and was founsd to be as in table 3 below:

Mea

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

Posi

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

tion

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

0.85

0.56

0.5

0.32

0.31

0.36

0.25

0.37

0.37

0.48

0.58

0.67

5

25

25

5

5

75

75

5

n

SD

25

0.35

0.49

0.50

0.47

0.46

0.48

0.43

0.48

0.48

0.50

0.49

0.47

932

920

315

132

643

375

574

717

717

299

539

132

426

823

460

992

680

509

467

735

735

734

014

992

4

5

6

3

2

2

5

2

6

Table 3: Mean and SD for each position

From the data in table 3 above, the graph for the mean and SD for each position was as shown below

Graph of Mean and SD for each postion 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Mean

8

9

10

11

12

SD

Graph 1: Graph of mean and SD for each position

Discussion From the graph 1 above, we can see that an average of 0.85 participants remembered the words in the first position of the lists correctly. This average reduced fir the second

6 position and dropped to 0.5625. This average kept dropping for the consecutive positions and the lowest recall rate was at position 7 with an average of 0.25 participants being able to recall it correctly. From the eight position the recall rate started to rise and moved to 0.375 and by the twelfth position, the recall rate average had raised to 0.67. The participants recalled the words at the beginning and the end of the lists more than the middle of the list. These results were consistent with the serial position effect for short term memory as suggested by (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) which states that participants presented with a list of words tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list. This theory explains that the words are the beginning of the list were easily recalled due to rehearsal. This ability to remember the words at the beginning of a list due to rehearsal is called primacy effect and the words are said to have been stores in the long term memory. Similarly, the words at the end of the list went to the short term memory and were therefore easily recalled. The ability to recall words at the end of a list is called the recency effect. Words in the middle of the middle of the list could not easily be recalled since the short term memory was full as it can only hold limited amounts of information for short period of time. The main limitation to this experiment is that the participants were aware of the theory being tested. They knew that words at the beginning and at the end of the list were easy to recall since they are students of the course and therefore they could focus on the middle words and this could lower the reliability of the results. Participants could also use mnemonics to recall the words and this would allow consolidation of more words from the short term memory to the long term memory. This study can be applied in learning. The most important information to be remembered should be studied at the beginning and at the end of the study session to allow primary and recency effect to take place. It could also be used in advertising. The most important content should be put in the beginning and at the end of the advertisement Conclusion The results of this experiment were in line with previous experiments of the serial positon effect of the short term memory. It was found that words at the beginning and at the beginning and at the end of a list were easier to recall than words at the middle of the list. This is called the primacy and recency effect

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References Cherry, K. (2021). What Is Short-Term Memory?. Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-short-term-memory-2795348 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. Mcleod, S. (2021). Multi Store Memory Model | Simply Psychology. Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/multi-store.html Mcleod, S. (2021). Serial Position Effect | Simply Psychology. Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/primacy-recency.html#:~:text=Experiments %20show%20that%20when%20participants,as%20the%20serial%20position %20effect....