302 Lab Memory Exercises: Set 2

Serial Position

A. Questions:

1. Imagine that you have arrived at a party where you don’t know anyone except the host. He introduces you to ten people all in a row by giving you their names. Later you would like to talk to some of them and be able to address them by name. In terms of memory issues, what’s your best strategy for whom to talk to first, last and not at all?

2. What do you think would happen to the graph of results of this demonstration if before you were allowed to recall the letters you were asked to do a few seconds of mental arithmetic?

3. The serial position effect can be obtained over durations of years. How does this fact complicate the idea that the recency and primacy effects are due to the operation of two separate memories? (Think of both primacy and recency here in terms of rehearsal.)

            4. With regard to the reading assignment that looked at serial position effects for

 television commercials, what did the researcher determine was necessary to do in

 the experiment to control for the possible confounding variable of distinctiveness.” How is/was that accomplished, experimentally?

            5. What was the dependent variable in Experiment 1 of the memory for television

            commercials paper? From the General Discussion for all three experiments in the

            memory for television commercials article, was the primacy effect or the recency

            stronger and more reliable?

            6. In the reading assignment that investigated serial position effects in the spatial

            memory of dogs, especially in the general discussion of all the experiments, did it

            appear that dogs have relatively strong or relatively weak serial position effects?

            A number of studies indicate that many animals have a stronger recency effect

            than primacy effect. Do this study’s authors conclude that it is the same for dogs?

Phonological Similarity

A. Questions:

1. In the phonological loop model, what is the phonological store? And, what is the purpose of saying numbers aloud on half of the trials in this demonstration?

2. Compare your performance in the dissimilar condition when you engaged in articulatory suppression with your performance in the dissimilar condition when you did not. Which condition led to better memory?

3. In a demonstration similar to this one, do you think you would be more likely to report seeing an item not on the original list in the similar quiet condition or in the dissimilar quiet condition? Explain.