AS Primacy Recency Cognitive Psychology Couse work - page 1
Keywords: S Primacy Recency Cognitive Psychology Couse work coursework
By Mercuryeagle on 16/11/2006 18:06:42
Level: A Level (Year 12) / AS Level
Page Number: 1 of 10 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Introduction
The study that is to be investigated is derived from the cognitive area of psychology. A major area of this approach that relates to this study is memory, which more specifically looks at “investigating the serial position effect in memory.”
In the past, a number of relevant studies to the ‘serial position effect in memory’ have been conducted. Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968, 1971) introduced what was arguably the most influential model of memory, the two-process model.
Long-term Memory
Sensory Register
Short-term Memory
Information Input
(A diagram illustrating Atkinson and Shiffrin’s multi store model)
They suggested that incoming information is instantaneously transferred to sensory memory, which can uphold information for up to one second (Sperling, 1960) before being lost. If this information is attended to it is coded in short-term memory (STM). Similarly, information rehearsed adequately in STM is coded in long-term memory (LTM). This theory is widely accepted and shows the existence of STM and LTM. Therefore, it also provides reason for the serial position curve (SPC) as the two peaks in the curve (refer to diagram below) highlight the effect of STM and LTM; whereas information not attended to or rehearsed enough is lost. This explains the unique shape of the SPC.
This is a graph of the serial position curve. It demonstrates that when a list of information (e.g. words) is read out the words at the beginning and the end of the list are best remembered. The peak at the beginning and the end of the curve is known as the primacy and recency effect respectively.
(A graph showing the Serial Position Curve)
LTM is thought to have unlimited capacity. STM has a limit and Miller (1956) proposed that its capacity is between five to nine chunks of information. A chunk of information refers to a unit of the material being presented. He believes a chunk is limited by how the information is organised into a meaningful unit. Miller’s theory explains the serial position curve because in the beginning the STM is empty, and information can be rehearsed effectively to the LTM. However as more information is being presented, not all can be rehearsed in time and stored in LTM, so many words in the middle are displaced and lost due to limited storage space of STM. Hence, items at
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