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Workshop On Pri - Recency Effect and False Memory

This document describes a memory experiment to test the recency and primacy effects. Subjects are asked to remember a list of 20 words read aloud at 1 second intervals. Their recall is best for the first and last few words due to the primacy and recency effects. A distraction task after the list causes forgetting of the last words. False memories can also be implanted by probing recall of non-presented words a few minutes later.

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57 views

Workshop On Pri - Recency Effect and False Memory

This document describes a memory experiment to test the recency and primacy effects. Subjects are asked to remember a list of 20 words read aloud at 1 second intervals. Their recall is best for the first and last few words due to the primacy and recency effects. A distraction task after the list causes forgetting of the last words. False memories can also be implanted by probing recall of non-presented words a few minutes later.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Now or Later - The "Recency/Primary" Effect

Here is a memory experiment that requires a group of subjects to test. Get


5 or more friends to serve as your experimental subjects. Tell them that you will
read a list of 20 words and that their job is to remember as many of the words as
possible. Read the following list of 20 words at a rate of 1 word every second.
Ask your subjects to write down the words that they can remember immediately
after you finish reading the list.
Here is the list of words:
cat
apple
ball
tree
square
head
house
door
box
car
king
paper
milk
fish
book
tape
table
flower
key
shoe

Now analyze the results of your memory study. You can collect the lists of
words that your subjects wrote or you can just ask them which words that they
remembered.

Find out if there was better recall of any particular words on your list.

Was there better recall of words that were read first or last?

To do this assign a "position" to each word that you read. So, "cat" was word
#1, apple was word #2, ball was word #3,....,shoe was word #20. Calculate the
percent of recall for each word. For example, if you had 10 subjects and 7 of
them remembered the word "cat", then "cat" (word #1) had a percent recall of
70%. Calculate the percent of recall for each of the 20 words.
Now plot your results: the X-axis will be word position and the Y-axis will be %
recall. Do you see a pattern? Does is look anything at all like this figure?:

The results of this kind of experiment usually result in a graph similar to


this one. This kind of graph is called a "serial-position curve." Words read first
and words read last are remembered better than words read in the middle of a
list.
This type of experiment provides evidence that there are 2 types of
memory processes. It is thought that memory is good for the words read last
because they are still in short term memory - this is the recency effect. Memory is
good for the words read first because they made it into long term memory - this is
the primacy effect.
It is also possible that some words in the list were very easy to recall for
other reasons. For example, if your teacher just dropped a hammer on his or her

toe, then everyone may find that the word "hammer" was easy to remember. Or
perhaps, the last name of someone in the group of subjects is "King", then
everyone would remember the word "king".
You can try this experiment again with a slight twist. Ask a new set of
subjects to remember the same set of words. However, immediately after you
finish reading the list, DISTRACT your subjects by having them count backwards
from 100 by threes (100, 97, 94, 91, etc) for about 15-30 seconds. Plot your
serial position curve again. Do you see any changes? Usually, distraction causes
people to forget the words at the end of the list. Did it happen to your subjects?

False Memories
Sometimes your brain makes up its own memories. Try to "implant" a
memory by asking people to remember the words on list 1. Wait about five
minutes, then probe their memory by asking them which words on list 2 they
remember.
List 1: read, pages, letters, school, study, reading, stories, sheets, cover,
pen, pencil, magazine, paper, words
List 2: house, pencil, apple, shoe, book, flag, rock, train, ocean, hill, music,
water, glass, school
Did they say that "book" was on list 1? Only pencil and school were on list 1.
Try these words:
List 1: sheets, pillow, mattress, blanket, comfortable, room, dream, lay,
chair, rest, tired, night, dark, time
List 2: door, tree, eye, song, pillow, juice, orange, radio, rain, car, sleep,
cat, dream, eat
Did they say that "sleep" was on list 1? Only pillow and dream were on list 1.

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