Murdock's serial position curve study

• • serial position refers to the position of an item in a sequence or list.
  • In the context of memory, the serial Position effect refers to the tendency for people to remember items at the beginning and end of a sequence better than items in the middle.
  • This effect is demonstrated through two distinct phenomena known as the primacy effect and the recency effect.
• Murdock's Serial Position Curve Study-

  Murdock's serial position curve study was a classic experiment conducted by J.Murdock in 1962 that investigated the effect of serial position on memory recall.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  AIM: The Study aimed to explore how the position of an item in a

  list affects the likelihood of it being recalled.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  PROCEDURE/METHOD:

  The experiment consisted of presenting participants with a list of words and asking them to recall as many of the words as they could immediately after the list was presented.

  Murdock varied the length of the list and the time interval between the presentation of the list and the recall task.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  RESULTS:

  The results of the study showed a typical serial position curve, with a u-shaped pattern of recall performance.

  • Specifically, Murdock found that participants were more likely to remember words presented at the beginning and end of the list (primary and recency effects) than words presented in the middle of the list.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  CONCLUSION:

  • The primary effect was explained by the idea that the first few items in the list were more likely to be transferred into long-term memory due to their extended rehearsal time.
  • The recency effect was explained by the fact that the last few items were still FRESH in participants short term memory when they were asked to recall them.
• Overall, Murdock's study provided evidence for the serial position effect and demonstrated how it can influence memory recall.

  the study has been cited in the field of cognitive psychology and has helped shape our understanding of mechanisms underlying human memory.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  A STRENGTH of this research is that it was conducted in laboratory conditions. Therefore cause and effect is established. this means that the independent variable is the position of the word in a list. And the dependent variable is the probability the word is recalled.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  Another STRENGTH of the research is that it is supported by

  research with amnesiacs.

  Research of amnesiacs has shown that people who can't store new long-term memories do not show a primary effects but they do show a recency effect. this shows that primary effect is linked to long-term memory.
• MURDOCKS SERIAL POSITION CURVE STUDY-

  A WEAKNESS is that it is an artificial task, as the participants had to learn a list of words, which isn't meaningful to them. therefore the findings are only telling us about the ability to recall lists of words, not information that is more meaningful to us.