SERIAL POSITION EFFECT ON VERBAL LEARNING

AIM
To Study the serial position effect on verbal learning using serial recall method.

BASIC CONCEPTS
Learning is a process by which experience produces a relatively enduring change in an
organism’s behavior or capabilities. The term capabilities highlights a distinction made by
many theorists: “knowing how” versus “doing”. Learning is any relatively permanent change
in behavior brought about by experience or practice.
There are four basic learning processes namely, Habituation, Classical Conditioning, Operant
Conditioning and Observational learning. Habituation means a decrease in the strength of
response to a repeated stimulus. The rest are further explained under the heading Types of
Learning.
1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: Classical conditioning, in which an organism learns to
associate two stimuli (e.g., a song and a pleasant event), such that one stimulus (the
song) comes to elicit a response (feeling happy) that originally was elicited only by
the other stimulus (the pleasant event). In the 1860s, Ivan Pavlov discovered
classical conditioning almost by accident. Pavlov’s (1923/1928) research team
confirmed this observation. Dogs have a natural reflex to salivate to food but not to
tones. Yet when a tone or other stimulus that ordinarily did not cause salivation was
presented just before food powder was squirted into a dog’s mouth, soon the sound
of the tone alone made the dog salivate. This process of learning by association
came to be called classical, or Pavlovian conditioning
2. OPERANT CONDITIONING: Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which
behavior is influenced by the consequences that follow it (Skinner, 1938, 1953).
Operant conditioning was first defined and studied by behavioral psychologist B.F.
Skinner. Skinner studied operant conditioning by conducting experiments using
animals which he placed in a 'Skinner Box' which was similar to Thorndike’s puzzle
box. A small box that had a lever at one end that would provide food or water when
pressed. A rat was placed in the box where it was free to move around. Eventually
the rat would press the lever and be rewarded. Skinner found that this process
resulted in the rat pressing the lever more frequently. Skinner would measure
learning by tracking the rate of the rat’s responses when those responses were
reinforced.
3. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING: Observational learning is the learning that occurs by
observing the behavior of a model. Observational learning can be highly adaptive.
By observing others, an organism can learn which events are important, which
stimuli signal that such events are about to occur, and which responses are likely to
produce positive or negative consequences. For example, hens may learn which
other hens they can reasonably pick a fight with and which ones they should avoid
by observing the hens that emerge as victors and losers in battles (Hogue et al.,
 1996). And monkeys may learn adaptive fears—such as a fear of snakes—by
observing other monkeys react with fear

4. COGNITIVE LEARNING: Cognitive learning theory states that learning requires

cognition, or the influence of an organism’s thought processes. Tolman (1948)
found that rats that were allowed to wander in a maze but were not reinforced still
showed evidence of having learned the maze once reinforcement became possible.
He termed this hidden learning latent learning, a form of cognitive learning.

5. CONCEPT LEARNING: It is a form of learning which requires higher order mental

processes like thinking, reasoning, intelligence, etc. For example, when we see a dog
and attach the term ‘dog’, we learn that the word dog refers to a particular animal.

6. SKILL LEARNING: It is also known as motor learning. The ability to perform a task
with proficiency, as defined by ease, speed, and accuracy of performance, acquired
through extensive practice. Skills may be motor, perceptual, cognitive, or a
combination of these. For example, reading or playing music.

7. VERBAL LEARNING: It is a process of actively memorizing new material using mental

pictures, associations and other activities.
Verbal learning was first used by Herman Ebbinghaus who used list non sense

syllables to test recall. Ebbinghaus would memorize lists of these syllables until he
could recall them perfectly, setting different accuracy criteria for different
experiments.

Methods of Verbal learning

Serial recall: Serial Learning involves memorizing a list of words in a particular order.
Ebbinghaus used what has come to be known as the method of complete presentation. He
spread the complete set of materials out before himself and thereafter began to learn them
by reading each word once at the stroke of a metronome .He tried to associate it with the
next item so that, when given any simple item, he would anticipate the next one. Thus,
despite the method of complete representation he learned by serial anticipation. Serial
anticipation produces some complicated and interesting effects in learning. It reflects upon
the nature of the processes people go through when they try to associate verbal items
together.

Paired Association learning: Paired-associate learning lists a stimulus and response item

together, such as can - light. If a person is prompted with the stimulus word, can, they are
more likely to be able to remember the response word, light. In a list, the stimulus words
cannot be too similar to one another, or it will be more difficult to recall the response item.
Free recall: involves memorizing a list of words in any order. Free recall is a way of saying
that subjects can recall the items presented to them in any order they wish. The way in
which they actually recall the material depends upon the material. Murdock found that the
probability of recall of individual items in a list is a function of their position in the list. He
found that items in the end of the list were recalled better (Recency effect) and those at the
beginning of the list next (Primacy effect). The items in the middle of the list were recalled
the least. These results were independent of list size used. However, variation in terms of
serial position is dependent upon the nature of the material and the nature of the practice
(rehearsal).

Forgetting curve
The Forgetting Curve, first conceptualized by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in
the late 19th century. Forgetting curve is the amount of forgetting that occurs immediately
after learning is substantial, but after that initial drop in performance, memory loss is very
gradual.

 Ebbinghaus (1885) figured that he would need something that would be memorized easily
but without prior cognitive associations. The scientist created the so called “nonsense
syllables“. This can be understood as a consonant-vowel-consonant combination, where the
consonant does not repeat and the syllable does not have prior meaning, like DAX, BOK, and
YAT. After creating the collection of syllables, Ebbinghaus pulled out a number of random
syllables from a box and then write them down in a notebook. Then, to the regular sound of
a metronome, and with the same voice inflection, he would read out the syllables, and
attempt to recall them at the end of the procedure.
There are few rules that we follow while making the NSS, they are as follows:

1. List should not be in an order such that any vowel is followed by another vowel a-e-i-
o-u one after another.
2. Random pattern of vowel should not be repeated after all vowels have been used. A
vowel should be repeated after 4 different vowels.
3. If a consonant is used in a syllable the consonant immediately before and after it the
alphabetical order should not be used directly above or below that consonant.
 4. One consonant should be repeated at least as possible preferably after 6 words but
not in the same position if it was used before.
5. Write all the alphabets to avoid making mistake while making the list.

Learning curve
A learning curve is a correlation between a learner's performance on a task and the number
of attempts or time required to complete the task. There are different types of learning
curves, namely, Positive acceleration curve, negative acceleration curve, S-shaped learning
and no learning at all.
1. Positive Acceleration Curve- When some measure of behaviour increases across
time before reaching a plateau, this is described as a positive accelerating learning
curve.

2. Negative Acceleration Curve- The curve is negatively accelerated, which means that
further practicing psychometric tests improves performance but with diminishing
returns. That is, the pattern generally shows rapid improvement from initial practice
followed by less improvement with additional practice.

3. S- Shaped Learning- It measures an individual who is new to a task. The bottom of

the curve indicates slow learning as the learner works to master the skills required
and takes more time to do so.
Factors affecting learning
Meaningfulness: Non sense syllable takes longer to recall because it has no meaning and is
harder for the subject to comprehend, whereas meaningful words are easy to recall.
Primacy and recency effect: The primacy effect results in information presented earlier
being better remembered than information presented later on. The recency effect results in
better recall of the most recent information presented. Together, these two effects result in
the earliest and latest information in a given presentation being recalled best, with
information in the middle being least remembered.
Motivation: It is the most important factor influencing the learner. If the learner has no
motivation to learn, any amount of force will be futile. More the motivation better will be
the learning. 
Similarity: Words in NSS list that made more sense to the subject would recall and
memorise quicker than other words in the same list. The items in Meaningful list would be
more familiar and similar to what the subject already knew from before so they would recall
better.
In the present concept an attempt is made to study the serial position effect on verbal
learning.

HYPOTHESIS:
A. The subject will give a higher number of absolute correct responses and percentage
correct responses in the case of meaningful word as compared to the nonsense syllables.
B. Irrespective of the nature of the material to be learned the subject will recall the first few
and the last few items earlier as compared to the middle items.

VARIABLES:
Independent variables- list A (NSS list) and list B (meaningful list)
Dependent variable- Number of trials taken by the subject for perfect recall
Controlled variables- duration-2 seconds per syllable, font size of words on each slide (115),
color of each word (black), 47% association value of NSS words, number of items in the list-
12

DESIGN:
An experiment will be conducted in two phases. In the first phase, 12 nonsense syllables will
be presented to the subject. She will be asked to read these aloud as the words appear on
the screen of the laptop. Each word will be presented for a very brief period of two seconds.
After the first presentation is over, the subject will be asked to recall as many words as she
can in the order in which the words are presented for which she will be given a paper and
pencil. The process will keep repeating itself over and over again till the subject is able to
recall all the words.
After this a rest pause of 5 minutes will be given. In the second phase, 12 meaningful words
will be shown to the subject and the same procedure will be followed as in the first part.

MATERIAL REQUIRED:
 NSS list (47% av)
 Meaningful words list
 A laptop
 Paper
 Pencil

PRELIMINARIES:
 Name of the subject: Miss Meera Mehra
 Age: 24
 Gender: Female
 Place of conduction of experiment: At my residence, Haldwani Uttarakhand
 Educational qualification: MBBS

PRECAUTIONS
The following precautions will be taken before the experiment:

 Each item will be displayed for 2 seconds.

 Paper will be provided to the subject after the presentation.
 Place of conduction should be proper lit.
 Laptop screen should be properly arranged.
 No feedback will be provided to the subject while recalling the words.
PROCEDURE:
 ARRANGEMENT OF MATERIAL: The laptop screen and the power point presentation
with the list of nonsense syllables was kept ready for displaying and the slide
transition time for the slides was set at two seconds.

 RAPPORT FORMATION: A light informal conversation was carried out with the
subject to make her feel comfortable with the surroundings before beginning the
experiment. She was assured of the confidentiality of results and the experiment
was begun only after the subject was ready to do so.

 INSTRUCTIONS: “Thank you for agreeing to participate in this activity. You are
requested to attend it in an undistracted manner. Please follow the instructions
carefully. This activity will be conducted in two phases.
Phase 1: A list of three lettered words will be presented to you one by one. Before
the beginning of each list you will get a ready signal in form of a star that will be
presented to you on the screen. You are requested to look at them carefully and
recall them and write them on a piece of paper that will be provided to you. If you
are not able to recall all the words at once you will be provided with another trial.
Trials will be continued till the time you are able to recall the words in the same
order as presented to you.
After the first phase has been over you will be provided with a rest pause of 5
minutes before beginning the second phase.
Phase 2: Now you will be presented with another list of three lettered words and you
are required to recall the words in the same order as presented to you. A ready
signal in the form of a star will appear on your screen at the beginning. Trials will be
continued till the time you are able to recall all the words in the same order as
presented to you.”

 CONDUCTION: The experiment was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a
list of 12 nonsense syllables was presented to the subject. She was asked to read
those aloud as the words appeared on the screen of the laptop. Each word was
presented for a very brief period of two seconds. After the first presentation was
over, the subject was asked to recall as many words as she could in the order in
which the words were presented for which she was given a paper and pencil. The
process kept repeating itself over and over again till the subject was able to recall all
the words. After that a rest pause of 5 minutes was given to the subject. In the
second phase, 12 meaningful words was shown to the subject and the same
procedure was followed as in the first part.

 INTROSPECTIVE REPORT: “I thought I had a really poor memory, but this activity
made me feel otherwise. For the first stage, instead of memorizing the alphabets, I
made them into simple words and put them to form a story which made easier
which otherwise seemed impossible in the first trial.
 The second stage was much easier, and hardly took 3 trials using the same trick-
forming a story. It was overall a good exercise and I learnt that things which cannot
be memorized as they are can be given a twist to learn them better.”

RESULT:
The aim of the experiment was to study the serial position effect in verbal learning by using
the serial recall method. Verbal learning is the process of actively memorizing new material
using mental pictures, associations, and other activities. Verbal learning was first studied by
Herman Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall . There are three
ways of verbal learning
1. Serial position: involves memorizing a list of words in a particular order.
2. Free recall: lists a stimulus and response item together
3. Paired associate method: involves memorizing a list of words in any order
It was hypothesized that the subject would take more number of trials to recall the NSS list
as compared to the Meaningful list. It was found that she took 6 trials to recall the NSS list
and 3 trials to recall the meaningful list to the criterion of two errorless serial recall. It was
also observed that the subject learned the first few and the last few words of the list more
easily as compared to the middle of the list, both for the NSS list as well as the meaningful
words list.

RESULT TABLES
Result table of NSS list

S. WORDS T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6
NO
.
1 MIJ      
2 TUY      
3 HEB      
4 XOW      
5 FAZ      
6 NIR      
7 PUK      
8 CES      
9 GOH      
10 YAT      
11 WIQ      
12 DUF      
Result table of meaningful list

S.NO. WORDS T1 T2 T3
1 MAT   
2 JOY   
3 RED   
4 PUN   
5 FIX   
6 HAS   
7 COW   
8 GEL   
9 TUB   
10 DIM   
11 YAK   
12 NOR   

NSS Table

S.NO. WORDS RECALLED TOTAL CORRECT RECALL %

1 MIJ 5 6 83.33
2 TUY 5 6 83.33 83.33%
3 HEB 5 6 83.33
4 XOW 3 6 50.00
5 FAZ 5 6 83.33
6 NIR 4 6 66.67 58.33%
7 PUK 3 6 50.00
8 CES 2 6 33.33
9 GOH 4 6 66.67
10 YAT 2 6 33.33
11 WIQ 3 6 50.00 61.11%
12 DUF 6 6 100.00

Meaningful Table

100%
 S.NO. WORDS RECALLED TOTAL CORRECT RECALL %
1 MAD 3 3 100.00
2 JOY 3 3 100.00
3 RED 3 3 100.00
4 PUN 3 3 100.00
5 FIX 2 3 66.67
6 HAS 2 3 66.67
7 COW 2 3 66.67
8 GEL 2 3 66.67
9 TUB 2 3 66.67
10 DIM 3 3 100.00
11 YAK 3 3 100.00
12 NOR 3 3 100.00

GRAPHS
Graph 1: Bar Diagram depicting the number of trials taken to recall list A and list B
Graph 2: Frequency polygon representing the percentage of correct responses of each trial
of both the lists.

Graph 3: Frequency polygon representing the average percentage of correct response of

first three, middle six and last three words of both the list

Graph 4: Graph representing absolute number of errors committed for both the list
Graph 5: Graph representing the average percentage of incorrect response of first three,
middle six and last three words of both the list.

Calculations of percentage correct recall

In total, for recalling the NSS words the subject took 6 trials for two correct errorless free
responses.
In List A of nonsense syllables, the mean percentage of first three items is as follows:
83.33% + 83.33% + 83.33% / 3 = 83.33%
The mean percentage of middle six items is as follows:
50% + 83.33% + 66.67% + 50% + 33.33% + 66.67% / 6= 58.33%
The mean percentage of last three items is as follows:
33.33% + 50% + 100 % / 3 = 61.11 %
In total, for recalling the meaningful words the subject took 3 trials for two correct errorless
free responses.
In list B of meaningful words, the men percentage of first three items is as follows:
100% + 100% + 100% / 3= 100%
The mean percentage of middle six items is as follows:
100% + 66.67% + 66.67% + 66.67% + 66.67% + 66.67% / 6 = 72.23%
The mean percentage of last three items is as follows:
100% + 100% + 100% / 3= 100%

DISCUSSION
The aim of this experiment was to study the serial position effect on verbal learning by using
serial recall method. Verbal learning is the process of actively memorizing new material
using mental pictures, associations, and other activities. Two hypothesis were stated first,
the subject would give a higher number of absolute correct responses and percentage
correct responses in the case of meaningful word as compared to the nonsense syllables
and second Irrespective of the nature of the material to be learned the subject would recall
the first three and the last three items earlier as compared to the middle items. In order to
study this, two lists were prepared i.e., NSS (47% av) and meaningful list so and so and
criteria of 2 perfect recall was taken. The subject took six trials to recall the NSS list and
three trials to recall the meaningful list to the criterion of two correct errorless recall. In
general, meaningful words list was easier to remember as compared to the NSS list. In both
the lists, it was seen that the subject recalled the first few items and the last few items early
as compared to the middle items.
The bar graph (graph 1) demonstrates the number of trials taken by the subject to recall
both the lists. Bar for NSS list is taller than the meaningful words list indicating less number
of trials was taken to recall meaningful words list. In graph 2, the frequency polygon
represents the percentage of correct responses of each trial of both the lists. It depicts an
overlapping curve. Graph 3 represents the average percentage of correct response of first
three, middle six and last three words of both the list which makes a U- shaped curve. This
U-shaped pattern is called the serial position effect, meaning that the ability to recall an
item is influenced by the item’s position in a series.
The findings state that the first hypothesis was completely supported whereas the second
hypothesis was supported partially in the case of NSS list. These findings established the
primacy effect i.e. the tendency to recall first few items and the recency effect i.e. the
tendency to recall last few items. In case of the NSS list, recency effect is not seen clearly as
the subject was only able to recall the last word in each trial rather than the last few words.
As it can be observed the first few items and the last few items were learnt and retained for
a longer period of time in the memory. This indicates towards the primacy and recency
effect which in turn tells us about the subjects’ long term and short-term memory
respectively. Short Term Memory is a memory store that temporarily holds a limited
amount of information. It is also called the working memory. The recency effect occurs
because we retain item at the end of the list in our short-term memory. Long Term Memory
is our vast library of more durable stored memories. The primacy effect occurs because we
retain items at the beginning of the list in our long-term memory.
The last few items were still in the short term memory for the recency effect because the
time that has last between the presentation of the list and the recall of the items is not long
enough for the items to be processed so closely that they reach the long-term memory of
the subject. And the first few items, by that time, have probably reached the long term
memory. However, for the middle items in the list there is greater interference i.e.
interference from the first few items as well as from the last few items, because of which
the words are not learnt properly. On the basis on Atkinson-Shiffrin model (1968), the first
few items had already reached the long term memory after a lot of processing and rehearsal
and therefore they can be stored there for a long period of time, so the first few items are
recalled much better. The middle items are neither in the short term memory and they are
not been able to be stored in the long term memory, therefore there is strong inference
effect both with the first few and last few items, so these are the least efficiently learnt.
However, the last few items were still in the short term memory, although they had not
reached the long term memory. Therefore, the percentage recall for correct responses is
higher for the last few items.
In the present experiment, the McCrary-Hunter hypothesis (1953) was also clearly visible. In
that the curves, primacy and recency effects were much more pronounced for the words in
the beginning of the list when the curves were plotted in terms of absolute number of errors
committed and was plotted in term of percentage of errors for both the list (graph 4 and 5).
There was a great degree of overlap between the two curves. Thus, proving the McCrary-
Hunter hypothesis.
The findings of the present experiment fully support the first hypothesis which is, the
subject will give a higher number of absolute correct responses and percentage correct
responses in the case of meaningful word as compared to the nonsense syllables whereas
partially support the second hypothesis which is, irrespective of the nature of the material
to be learned the subject will recall the first few and the last few items earlier as compared
to the middle items. Recency effect was not clearly visible in the case of NSS list.