CS Murdocks Serial Position Study Flashcards
What is the primary effect
Words at the beginning of a list are remembered more as they have been rehearsed and have become long-term memories.
What is the recency effect
Words at the end of a list are remembered more as they have been heard recently so are in short-term memory.
What was the aim of Murdock serial position curve study
Murdock set out to see if memory of words was affected by where words are located in the list.
What was the method of Murdock serial position curve study
Words from the 4,000 most common words in English were chosen randomly.
Participants listened to 20 word lists with 10 to 40 words on them.
They recalled the words after each list.
What were the results of Murdock serial position curve study
Recall was related to the position of the word in the list.
Murdock found higher recall for the first few words (primacy effect) and the last words (recency effect) in the list, compared to recall of the words in the middle of the list.
What was the conclusion of Murdock serial position curve study
Proves the serial position effect, i.e. the position of a word determines the likelihood of recall.
These results support the Multi store model as the first few words were rehearsed, so are in LTM, and the last few words are in STM.
Name 2 strengths of Murdock serial position curve study
A strength of the study is that it was conducted in a very controlled conditions.
When we study cause and effect relationships it is important that we control everything carefully to isolate the variables which are:
IV the position of word in list
DV probability word was recalled
Other variable like familiarity of the words and speed at which they were read were controlled
Therefore, we can be more certain that it was the position of the words that affected recall.
A strength is that research with amnesiacs supports the conclusions of the study.
(1996) Carlesimo et al. found that some amnesiacs can’t store long-term memories and do not show a primacy effect but do show a recency effect.
This shows that the primacy effect is related to long-term memory.
Name one weakness of Murdock Serial Curve study
A weakness of the study is that the task was artificial.
Lists of words were used which relates to just one aspect of memory- how we deal with memorising words. We do a lot of other thing like remembering how to play basketballball
Therefore, the results don’t relate to how we use our memories in other ways.
