An Investigation Into the Recency and Primacy Effect - Essay Example

Investigation into the Recency and Primacy Effect INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRIMACY AND RECENCY EFFECT Investigation into the primacy and recency effect is the main objective of this paper. The arguments of the article are from Glanzerald Cunitz (1966) suggestions on primacy and recency effect. Glanzerald (1966) proposed that recency effect exist when participants take part on a test involving remembering words under interference task conditions. Thus, one of the predictions that can be drawn from Glanzerald suggestion is that when a certain group of participants remembers words under interference task conditions, the recency effect present is usually very little. Another prediction is that under non- interference task conditions both the primacy and recency effect is usually present. The sample of this test involved only one group that had twenty members Memory can be described as a space within human’s brain where information is stored, that is, it refers to the mental process through which information in the human brain is retrieved, encoded and reserved. In human brains, the encoding of information involves several forms that include semantics, visual, auditory, as well as smell. Conversely, retrieval involves the production of information from the brains, and it includes both recognition and remembering of information. Antikison & Shiffrin (1968) derived a multi-store model also referred to as the dual of the memory. The name dual is as a result of the nature of model which emphasizes mostly on both the long-term and short-term memory, and also due to the explanation it gives on how information flows from one storage system to the other. The model has three structural parts which include long-term memory store, sensory store and short-term memory store. The main function of the sensory store is to receive information from the surrounding; where some of it gets processed into short-term memory while the rest may be stored temporarily in the store. The sensory store includes the five senses of human beings that include hearing, smelling, touching, vision and tasting. Short-term memory can be defined as a temporary storage of information for only a short duration and involves limited processing. It has a limited capacity such that it only accommodates the items that can be stored withina particular time limit, and some of its storage information can be rehearsed under interference task conditions. A number of short-term memory information can be moved to long-term memory which is capable of accommodating permanent information where some of the can be lost through rehearsal. The transfer of information from long-term via rehearsal results in primary effect, while the information retained in the short-term memory, leads to recency effect. Results from a study conducted by Peterson and Peterson (1959) on a group of contributors who viewed worlds and did not do rehearsals showed limited time for short-term memory that agreed with the dual memory system model that states the short-term and the long-term memories have very different characteristics. The study by Glanzerand Cunitz (1966) on primary and recency effect concluded that the subjects would just remember the first few words and the last few words, that is, the recency and primacy effect respectively. Glanzerand concluded that the rehearsal process in the long-term memory enabled the participants only to remember the first few words while the short-term memory enabled them to remember the last few words. In free recall test, members participating are initially given some words and would be required to remember them regardless of the order they follow in recalling them and the pattern that forms is usually a U-curve known as a serial position. The U-curve helps to demonstrate that in most cases fthe participants tend to remember the first few and the last few words but forgets most of the words in the middle. Murdock (1962) investigated free calls using forty words with a group of members and found that the subjects recalled most of the first few and last few terms which coincides with the dual model of memory which states that primary effect is usually as a result of rehearsal process in the long-term memory and the recency effect is due to the information stored in the short-term store. Participants The sampling method was used to select the twenty participants and they were chosen on the first come first serve basis. Opportunity sampling was preferred for this experiment because it consumes very little time, it is cheap and convenient compared to other commercial sampling methods used. Design The study involved a controlled experiment as one of the major methods applied in cases involving memory investigation since it is usually possible to control variables which effects recalling of information. The controlled experiment method allowed a better opportunity of identifying extraneous variables thus making it possible to collect and analyze qualitative data as well as replication of the experiment. In this test, a recurring control measure design was used where all the members participating repeated the same trial under the similar conditions. This allowed the variables of the participant not to differ, hence leading to high levels of accuracy in the statistical analysis which depends on the consistency of the variables. Also, the design allowed the use of few participants, thus making it a cheap method of carrying out controlled tests. However, this method had some limitations which include demand characteristics. If the problem occurs, the group members can easily guess the objective of the study hence the final results becomes biased. The experiment avoided biasing the end results by ensuring that every participant did the experiment only once and alone, but the conditions would remain the same for all the participants. The number of words recalled from the list formed the dependent variable while the serial positions in the catalog were the independent variables. The conditions were such that all participants would use equal amount of time to view and to remember the words from the list (just one minute for each participant). This ensured that the results obtained were reliable since if the time allocated to the participants was not equal some of them would have memorized more words than others and hence compromise the main objective of the study which was to examine the recency and primary effect. Any participants having knowledge of psychology or had previously participated in a similar test were termed as extraneous variables and were not allowed to participate in the experiment. This was to avoid the occurrence of demand characteristics since they had knowledge of what the experiment was all about, hence if they participated the true reflection of the test would not have been obtained. The control to ensure that the extraneous variables were left out was done by questioning the participants before one could take part in the test. Discussion The findings of the investigation revealed that whenever an interference task was used there was very little recency effect and both the recency and primary effect were present in cases where non-interference task was used. The first graph showed that the primary and recency effect did not exist in all the conditions. However, the results supported the predictions in the introduction that the primary and recency effects occur if the curve of the graph plotted formed a U shape. In the cases where the shape of the curve does not form a perfect U, the interpretation of such a graph cannot be entirely conclusive. The left-hand side of a U-shaped graph corresponds to the recency effect while the right side matches with the primacy effect. The graph obtained from this experiment was U-shaped, where both the left and right sides were higher than the middle part, which is a clear indication that both the primacy and recency effects were present. However, the curve did not give a clear indication of whether there was lower recency effect in the interference task than in the non-interference task condition. The graph was such that the end curve of the interference data seemed to rise steeply while the end of the interface data appeared to remain fairly low all through. The graph also showed the average scores of some of the participants’ as1.1 out of the last given five words under the interference task data condition and sc 1.9 under the non-interference condition. The graph also provided evidence of the mode of both non-interference and interference conditions. For this experiment, the recalled number of words under non-interference was five while under the interference task condition the score was seven. The overall findings revealed a very wide variation on the final words remembered by the various participants. These results coincided with one of the Glanzerald’s suggestions that the final words includes the last part of the recency effect and is usually easy to recall those words under the interference task condition. One of the possible limitations for this study would have been created by the words. For instance, some words at the end of the list may have been hard to recall than the ones those at the beginning. Another problem of the words may have been that some words shares meaning or are related hence would be recalled easily by categorizing. For instance, if words such as ‘window,’ ‘door’ and ‘glass’ would be used in an investigation their limitation is that they are related words and the participants would recall them with ease. Another limitation of the investigation would be as a result of confounding variables. Different participants perform differently depending on the time they undertake a certain task. For example, certain persons performs better in the morning while others perform better in the evening, and therefore if a participant would take a test in the morning , the results obtained would be different if the same participant repeated the same test in the evening. To improve the reliability of the result obtained it would be necessary to consider better choice of words as this would ensure that the words used would not share meaning or sounds the same or be related. Better choice of words during such an experiment ensures that the results obtained would be more reliable to draw accurate conclusions regarding the primary and recency effect. Read More