Henry Roediger Experiment

In the last half century several theories have emerged with regard to the best model for human memory. In each of these models there was a specific way to help people recall words and

This experiment is based on previous research done. For example, in 1969, in a research by Bower and Clark, no difference in the immediate recall scores of both groups was noted, but when later asked to recall, those who used narrative chaining recalled an average of 93% of the words compared to the control group which only recalled an average of 13% of words. In another experiment, participants who used narrative chaining remembered six times more information than participants who learned by simply repeating the words to themselves (Loftus, 1980). Narrative chaining is particularly useful when a person wants to remember information in a particular order. The aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of narrative chaining on memory. It is hypothesized that in a group of 59 participants aged 10-69 years old, participants who use narrative chaining to remember a list of words will remember a higher number and percentage of words when asked to write down as many words as possible through serial recall compared to participants who use maintenance rehearsal.

Memory is the retention of information over time and it changes through our lifespan, from infancy through adulthood (Santrock 218). There are two types of memory, explicit and implicit.

Throughout the learning and memory experiment, there were many things conducted and tested. The first fifteen presidents of the United States was chosen as a word pair list in which you pair the first name of the president to the last name. The presidents were chosen because they did much for our nation that we should be thankful for. Remembering the word pair list, determined things about different reinforcements and the ability to recall words within a few minutes.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this experiment was to test whether a delay before recall would affect the serial position effect. The experiment was done by getting participants to take part in a simple tests; hearing words read out, then after they are read out, recalling them and writing them down. Two of these tests took place, one without a gap before recall, and one with. The results only partly supported previous research, with both tests showing a higher number of people remembering words at the start of the list, but unlike previous research findings, the last words of the list were not remembered

The current study was created to retest reproducibility of Slamecka and Graf results about participants remembering words better when they generated the words than when they read the words in a sample of undergraduate students at Texas A&M University (Slamecka and Graf, 1978). Nineteen undergraduate students at Texas A&M University participated in an experiment where one group was given a set of words and were told to memorize the words. The other group was given one word and the first letter of the second word and was told to generate the second word. It was hypothesized that the group with the participants who generated the second word would remember those sets of words better than the other group. Results showed that the group who generated the second word significantly memorized the words better, the p value being < .05. More in depth explanations involving more variables are discussed such as the five rules, or the within subjects, and their effect on the generation effect as well as future directions.

|  Episodic memory is recollection of specific events;  Semantic memory is the recollection of general knowledge and facts.

Declarative memory is further divided into semantic memory and episodic memory. Semantic memory is an acquired meaning of structured record of facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about the external world whereas episodic memory is memories of experiences and specific events in time that are often autobiographical and have emotions associated with them.

Roenker, D., Thompson, C., & Brown, S. (1971). Comparison of measures for the estimation of clustering in free recall. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 45-48.

An individual’s ability to use have the clearest more accurate memory has always been one of heated debate. False memories from the same constructive process that produces true memories exposing a very concerning fault in our reasoning of memory. This idea of false memory is text in this experiment by using a sequence of 16 words, along with both unrelated and related distractor words. The 43 participant, who is an ungraduated at Hope College enrolled in PSYCH 340, is shown a list of 16 words and asked to recall them. Some of the recalled words were from the original list and some of the others were unrelated or related distractors. It was hypothesized that the related distractor words would be more likely be reported than the unrelated distractor

• Condition 1 – 25 participants were given a printed grid of 30 random words and given 2 minutes to memorise them. Participants were seated at a table/desk in a quiet room. After learning there is then a 2 minute pause after which participants were given a further 2 minutes in which to recall the words.

Some scientists believe that parts of long term memory are permanent while others will eventually weaken over time. (3) Long term memory can be divided into three sections: procedural memory, declarative memory, and remote memory. Procedural memory includes motor skills such as learning how to ride a bike or how to drive a car. "Such memories are slow to acquire but more resistant to change or loss." (4) Declarative memory is used to remember facts, such as names, dates and places. It is easy to learn but also easy to lose. Finally there is episodic memory, which is the record of events that a person stores throughout his or her experience. Recent studies show that these events, as soon as they occur, are sent to a temporary part of the brain called the hippocampus, and that over time they are moved to the neocortex for permanent storage. (5).

Cognitive psychology deals with the mental aspects of processes such as memory where there are many methods, known as mnemonics, which attributes to the expansion of information that can be retained by a person. One method used is chunking, the practices of taking chunks of separate information and organizing them into larger units so that information becomes easier to recall, which is demonstrated in Tulving’s “Subjective Organization in Free Recall of ‘Unrelated’ Words” (1962). Tulving (1962) aim to measure the extent of recall on verbal items when presented in different orders. Tulving asked sixteen female undergraduates to learn a list of 16 words that would be presented on sixteen separate trials, each trial had the words in a different

For this experiment, I used the Memory Interference Test (MIT) where undergraduates contribute to a database by choosing a test that analyzes their memory with either seeing pictures, reading words or hearing. The objective for the MIT is to create data for the participants, in the test, to hypothesize on different aspects of the exam and of

Besides this, prior research has also demonstrated that serial recall is dependent on age. When performing free recall tasks, young adults tend to begin recall with items appearing at the end of the lists (Howard & Kahana, 1999). In the immediate serial recall tasks (ISR), performance on ISR is characterized by extended primacy effects and small recency effects (Tan, 2008). Serial position effect is expected to generalize