Primacy & Recency Effects in Recall | AQA GCSE Psychology Revision Notes 2019

The effects of serial position

Serial position effect refers to the tendency for people to:
- recall items which appear at the beginning of a list (primacy effect)
- recall items which appear at the end of a list (recency effect)
- forget items which appear in the middle of a list
The position of an item (e.g. a word or a digit) will determine whether or not that item is recalled, particularly if the list is longer than 9 items (the capacity of STM is 5-9 items)
Serial position effect operates as follows:
- items at the beginning of a list have been rehearsed and so are easily recalled as they have been transferred to LTM
- items at the end of a list are easily recalled as they are still in STM
- items in the middle of a list have been pushed out of STM by the next items and have not been rehearsed therefore they are displaced and are not easily recalled
The serial position ‘curve’ graphically shows both primacy and recency effects.

Murdock (1962) conducted a lab experiment into serial position effect as follows:
- 103 participants (Psychology students) who took part in several trials of the experiment in groups
- The participants listened to 20-word lists, incorporating some of the most common words in the English language
  - The word lists were any length from 10 - 40 words
- The participant was asked to use free recall (recalling the words in any order) once they had heard each list
- The results showed that the first and the last words on every list were the most easily recalled i.e. the classic serial position curve
- In short, there was clear evidence of a primacy and a recency effect for each word list participants were given
- Murdock concluded that serial position effect occurs when a list of words is recalled, with recency effect being the stronger of the two effects shown
Serial position effect studies give support to the multi-store model of memory as they provide evidence for two separate storage systems for STM and LTM

Murdock’s study is a NAMED STUDY on the AQA specification which means that you could be asked specific exam questions on it.

Murdock’s study used a standardised procedure in controlled conditions which makes it high in reliability
The use of several different trials and different-length word lists means that Murdock was able to repeatedly test serial position effect across the study which gives it good internal validity

Memorising word lists is an artificial task which means that the study lacks ecological validity
The use of Psychology students as participants is problematic because: it is an unrepresentative sample which cannot be easily generalised there is more likelihood of the participants guessing the aim of the experiment if they are familiar with psychological theories

Here is an example of a question you might be asked on this topic - for AO3.

AO3: You need to analyse and evaluate key concepts, ideas, theories and research.

Question:

Murdock (1962) used a repeated measures design in his study of serial position effect.

Briefly evaluate the use of repeated measures design in experiments. [3]

Model answer:

A repeated measures design is advantageous in terms of removing individual differences as a confounding variable as participants are tested against their own performance across conditions.
A repeated measures design does, however, involve possible order effects if participants experience the conditions in the same order each time.
Another advantage of this type of design is that fewer participants are needed as each participant generates at least two scores each.