Serial Position Effect Research Paper

a. Introduction

The serial position effect is defined by the likelihood to remember, or recall, the first and last items in a series, or a list, rather than the middle items. This creates a U-shaped curve when graphing this event. The primary effect is defined by the tendency to remember the beginning of the series. The recency effect is defined by the tendency to remember the last few items of the series. An explanation for this phenomenon is as such, the first set of items in a series is put into long-term memory as a result of rehearsal. The last set of items is put into short term memory. The items in the middle of the series were poorly recalled because they were not efficiently put in the short term memory because a lot more items came afterward. This

experiment was performed by researchers to have insight on the prediction that serial position functions with primary and recency effects when tested on general knowledge.
b. Method
This experiment was tested on 261 undergraduate students from Lake Forest College who needed credit in a variety of introductory courses.

The study was done in groups of about 40 students in a classroom setting. The sessions of each group lasted about 15 minutes. Five sets of stimuli were gathered, that being three approximately even increments between the exemplars and two unequal increments. The researchers chose even increments for well-known actors relative to age, zoo animals associated with their adult weight, and professional all-star basketball players in relation to height. The unequal increments were set by country size relative to land mass and the diameter of the eight planets. The experiment was divided into two parts. The first part involved to participants rating their knowledge in the five stimuli; actors, professional basketball player, zoo animals, planets. The participants rated their knowledge on a scale 1-5, 1 being not at all knowledgeable and 5 being extremely knowledgeable. After completing part one they went on to part 2. In part 2, the participants did five free reconstructions of order tasks separately. They were to reconstruct the order of each item along the specified

dimension.
c. Results
The experiment works only if the participants have knowledge of the items in the series. If the participant lacked knowledge in that category of stimuli, their data was excluded. In the episodic memory test, it is apparent which item is first and last, which contributes to the primary and recency effect. In demonstration one; stimuli one; the actors and their age, the mean knowledge of rating for actors was 3.101. 31 out 261 participants had a mean knowledge of less than 2, so their data was excluded. The proportion of actors correctly placed in chronological order was analyzed with the position as a within-subjects factor. This showed the serial position function includes a primary effect and a recency effect. They further analyzed the serial position function by comparing the number of participants who remembered the first and last items better that the items in the middle of the list. The researchers also did the same analysis test on the other stimuli, of which are animals and weight; basketball players and height; countries and land mass; planets and diameter. For four of the five stimuli, similar results occurred, participants remember the first items and last items in the list better than the middle.
d. Discussion
The results of this experiment are steady with past studies on the serial position effect. It is not possible to show evidence in everything that the serial position effect, but it is also difficult to show it does not apply. The experiment produced a serial position function and error gradient reminiscent.