What are serial position effects?

Question 1

What are serial position effects?

Answer 1

This is the idea that recall accuracy varies as a function of an item’s position within a study list. When asked to recall a list of items in any order (free recall), people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect). Among earlier list items, the first few items are recalled more frequently than the middle items (the primacy effect.)

Question 2

How are they obtained and what do they look like?

Answer 2

Subjects are given a list of unrelated words and asked to recall all the words that they can remember.

“Obtained” = briefly describe the experiment
“what do they look like” = Bi-modal effect seen in the U shape curve  draw the graph of what their responses look like (label the axis) and explain it.

Items at the beginning of the list are most rehearsed and committed to long-term memory. Items at the end of the list are remembered because they were just heard. Everything in between is sort of forgotten.

Question 3

Provide a description of how have researchers interpreted the primacy and recency effects and the experimental evidence used to support this interpretation.

Answer 3

Primacy effects: can be likened to LTM whereas Recency effects: can be likened to STM

How do you test these?

Recency (end of list): items that occupy Working Memory and are in that sensory memory

Primacy (beginning of list): number of time you can rehearse affects retrieval—if you can’t rehearse you won’t transfer to LTM

Think about: the first items get more time for rehearsal, but the final items haven’t had as much time to decay. Distracters prevent rehearsal and keep your STM busy, thereby causing a time delay which causes decay.