Glanzer & Cunitz 1966 "Words" Flashcards
(10 cards)
Serial position effect
The serial position effect is the tendency to remember the first and last items in a series better than those in the middle. It is a form of cognitive bias that is thought to be due to how information is processed and stored in memory
primacy and recency effect
The tendency to recall earlier words is called the primacy effect; the tendency to recall later words is called the recency effect.
participants
Army enlisted men (not randomly assigned) (286 in total ale bylo ich 240 in experiment 1 and 46 in experiment 2)
aim
Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) designed experiments to test Atkinson and Shiffrin,’s Multi-Store Model of Memory (MSM). They aimed to test the hypothesis that there are two distinct storage mechanisms the STM store and the LTM store.
procedure in EXPERIMENT 1
IMMEDIATE RECALL
presented with lists of 20 common one-syllable nouns. The presentation rate, the time intervals between one word and the next, varied from 3, to 6 to 9 seconds
After each list, participants had 2 minutes to write down the words they recalled in any order.
procedure in EXPERIMENT 2
men were presented with lists of 15 common one-syllable nouns. They were asked to recall the list immediately or after a 10 or 30-second interval in which they performed a distraction task of counting backwards.
results
In the second experiment, people initially remembered words from the end of the list better than words from the middle. This is called the recency effect.
When people had to count numbers for 10 or 30 seconds before trying to remember the words, they had a harder time remembering the words at the end of the list. Counting for 30 seconds made the recency effect completely go away. In the first experiment, people were better at remembering words from the beginning of a list compared to words in the middle. This is called the primacy effect.
Results showed that the recency effect was strongest for immediate recall but declined after that. This variable did not impact the primacy effect.
The investigators once again concluded that the results demonstrated the existence of two distinct memory stores.
conclusions
Dual storage mechanisms: The study provides evidence for the involvement of both long-term and short-term storage mechanisms in free recall tasks.
Primacy effect and long-term storage:
Recency effect and short term memory
Implications for memory strategies: The findings suggest that to improve memory for a list of items, one should: a. Repeat or spend more time on the items at the beginning of the list to facilitate long-term storage. b. If there is a delay between learning and recall, rehearse the items during the delay to prevent decay from short-term memory.
strengths
Using simple, high-frequency nouns helps isolate the effects of the independent variables (presentation rate, repetition, delay) on recall performance in different list positions.
The experiments systematically manipulated variables thought to affect long-term and short-term memory (presentation rate, repetition, and delay) and measured their impact on recall performance at different list positions.
weaknesses
Limited generalizability: The experiments used a specific population (Army enlisted men) and simple verbal materials (lists of common nouns), so the findings may not generalize to other populations, materials, or real-world memory situations.
The use of only verbal materials (words) limits the generalizability of the findings to other types of information, such as visual or spatial memories
The study did not examine how individual differences in cognitive abilities, strategies, or prior knowledge might influence the primacy and recency effects.
