Murdock study

Aim

To investigate how the serial position curve was affected by list duration and presentation rates.

Participants

103 university students, male and female who were fulfilling a course requirement in introductory psychology. Split into groups of 5 participants

Method

Different groups of participants listen to lists of words with varying list lengths and presentation rates (list ranged from 10-40 words in length and presentation rate was either one or two seconds). Words were selected from a list of the most common english words, and murdock had 80 different lists for each length/rate combination (participants did 20 lists per session over 4 sessions) After each list participants were given 90 seconds to recall as many words as they could, in any order.

Results

Participants remembered more words from the beginning of the list and the end of the list, which is known as the serial position effect.

Conclusion/evaluation

Primacy effect, rehearsal led to LTM

Recency effect, still in STM

Middle poor due to displacement because STM’s limited capacity and not given enough time to transfer to LTM