Running head: THE EFFECT OF SPEED ON WORD PRESENTATION
The Effect of Speed of Word Presentation on the Primacy and Recency Effect in Free Recall
Abstract
The purpose of this experiment was to replicate the free recall experiment done by Murdock (1962). The experiment included manipulation of the speed at which the words were presented in order to see the effect that these words would have on the ability of a subject to recall them.
List 1 was presented ant a rate of one word every two seconds, while list 2 was presented at a rate of one word per second. There were 18 subjects used in this experiment. A dependent measures t-test was used and this showed that there was a significant difference between the means of the two groups. The data also suggests the existence of primacy and recency effect, that the recall of a word depends on its position within the list of words, and is more likely to be recalled if it located at the beginning or end of the list.
Queens College, City University of New York
English: Icon for Template:Cognitive-psych-stub il...
Lieutenant Reginald Barclay vs. Captain H.M. "Howl...Introduction
Murdock (1962) conducted a free recall experiment in an attempt to identify and determine whether the length of a list of words and the rate at which the words were presented, affected the ability of a subject to recall that list. Free recall was defined as a subject's ability to remember and recall a list of words that have been read to the subject.
The chance that a word will be recalled depends on that position of the word within the list of words being read. Words that were presented at the beginning and end of the list were more likely to be recalled than those words presented in the middle of the list. These effects have since been referred to as the primacy...