Glanzer Cunitz 1966 Serial Position Effect

• Recency effects occur because the just-presented list items are encoded in the short-term store and are immediately available for output when the end of the list signals that retrieval is required (Shiffrin & Atkinson, 1969; Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966).
• Glanzer and Cunitz Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) Aim: To investigate recency effect in free recall (i.e. In any order). Procedure: This was a laboratory experiment where participants first heard a list of items and then immediately had to recall them in any order. Results: Participants recalled words from the beginning of the list (primacy effect).

• Primacy Position Effect

This study investigates whether or not the serial position effects can be observed in a classroom setting where students have to recall a larger amount of information over a longer time frame. This study also looked at the teaching and test item presentation order effects on the students' performance.

Serial position curve and primacy and recency effects - Psychology bibliographies - in Harvard style. Change style powered by CSL. Popular AMA APA. (Glanzer and Cunitz, 1966) Your Bibliography: Glanzer, M. And Cunitz, A. Two storage mechanisms in free recall. The serial position effect of free recall. 1962 - Journal of.

Contrary to some prior studies, we did not find any order effect on students' performance. With respect to the serial position effects, we found primacy effects to be stronger than recency effects. The authors discuss the results and their implications as well as areas for further research. Key Words: Primacy Effect, Recency Effect, Serial Position Effect, Order Effect, Recall, Proactive and Retroactive interference, association effect, dual store memory effect, Disciplines of Interest: Interdisciplinary. INTRODUCTION The serial position effect is the phenomenon in which faster learning and greater recall of items occur at the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) in comparison to items at the middle of a list. The majority of the research on the serial position effect has been conducted under laboratory conditions in which subjects had to learn and recall words, consonant trigrams, nonsense syllables or number sets (Ebbinghaus, 1885; Foucault, 1928; Glenberg, Bradley, Draus, & Renzaglia, 1983; Ladd & Woodworth, 1911). Outside of the laboratory setting, Kurbat, Shevell, & Rips (1998) found that college students tended to recall personal experiences that occurred at the beginning and end of the semester better than those experiences that occurred in the middle of the semester.

Some prior studies have examined the effects of the order by which test questions are arranged whether in the order of difficulty (Paretta & Chadwick, 1975; Howe & Baldwin, 1983) or in the order by which the concepts are taught (Baldwin & Howard, 1983)) on students' performance. Studies concerning order effect are relevant to accounting education because they address the influence of content delivery on student learning. For example, Rebele, Stout, & Hassell (1991) reviewed several articles on course delivery and teaching methods and suggested that evidence regarding the impact of alternative teaching methods is, for the most part, The current study investigates whether or not the serial position effect can be observed in a real-world classroom setting where students have to learn, comprehend, and recall a large amount of related information over an extended time frame. Specifically, we tested the recall of information as a function of the order in which the material was presented in an undergraduate accounting course.

The content of the course studied was divided into modules of relatively equal levels of difficulty and presented to the students by the same instructor; the order in which the modules were presented was varied. We examined the serial position effect, the order of content delivery, and the order in which exam questions were presented as predictors of student performance in the course. The result of this study will provide insight into interdisciplinary strategies that can be used to teach and test students to enhance their performance in relevant accounting courses. PRIOR RESEARCH There is very little in the literature on the role of the order effect, recency effect or primacy effect on the performance of accounting students. Some prior studies have investigated the effect of alternative test question sequencing on students' performance. For example, some researchers have investigated the effects of question sequencing by the order of difficulty of the questions (Paretta & Chadwick, 1975; Howe & Baldwin, 1983).

While Paretta and Chadwick (1975) found a significant order effect on the students' performance, Howe and Baldwin (1983) did not find a significant order effect. In view of these conflicting results, Baldwin and Howard (1983) re-examined the order effect. Rather than examining the effect of the order of difficulty of the questions on the performance of the students, they examined the effect of the order in which test items were presented.

They presented the questions to a group of their subjects in the sequential order by which the concepts were taught to them (test sequential order group). They randomized the questions presented to the second group (test randomized group). They found an order effect showing that the test sequential order group significantly performed better than the test randomized group. However, none of the subsequent studies (i.e., Baldwin, Pattison, & Toolson, 1989; Stout & Wygal, 1989,1990; and Stout & Battista, 1991) found a significant order effect. None of these studies attributed the results to the recency effect. Gruber (1987) proposed the recency effect as the framework for extending Baldwin and Howard's (1983) study. Though all the groups were taught in the same sequential order, Gruber presented test items to one group according to the order by which they were taught.

He presented the test items to a second group in the reverse order by which they were taught and gave a randomized version of the questions to the third group. The results show the reverse order group performed significantly better than the other two groups.

He attributed the results to the recency effect. While Gruber (1987) attributes the results of his study to the recency effect, we consider an alternate explanation for his findings in the current study.

In fact, his results may support more the notion of test item order effects-three groups were taught the material in the same order but the groups received test items in different orders. If there was a recency effect, all the groups should have performed best on the items that were taught last no matter if they were the first items, the middle items, or the last items on the test. Though he attributed his result to the recency effect, his explanation of the result supports the test item order effect. For example, he states that one group did better than the other two and that the only difference among the three groups was the order of the test items. An appropriate examination of the recency effect would require that, for all three groups, students' performance on the most recent information taught to them be compared with their performance on the earlier information regardless of the location of the recent information in the order of the test items.

Gruber did not make such a comparison. The implication of Gruber's results is that the location of recent information in the order of test items matters. Gruber may have confounded the recency effect with the order effect because the recency effect does not imply the effect of the order by which the most recent information is presented in an examination. According to Terry (2005), a recency effect is dependent on immediate recall of the final items from short term memory.

Thus, the recency effect implies that the location of the most recently taught information on a test (whether sequentially ordered, reverse ordered, or randomly ordered) should not make any difference in the performance of the students; they should all do better on the last items taught in comparison to items taught earlier. For example, a prior study by Eakin and Reimers (1992) provides support for the recency effect by stating that individuals tend to put more weight on recent information and are therefore able to recall the recent information better than the earlier information. Using an earnings that the data were randomly arranged with respect to the dates, the recency effect was not eliminated. According to Terry (2005) the serial position in recall of commercials viewed under naturalistic conditions has been examined in two studies: (1) Where commercials on certain public television stations occur in long blocks between programs (Pieters and Bijmolt, 1997); and (2) Where commercials were aired during Super Bowl football broadcasts in the United States (Zhao, 1997). Terry (2005) performed experiments to obtain converging validity for the naturalistic findings of Pieters and Bijmolt (1997) and Zhao (1997). Using procedures that parallel those used to study serial position effects in laboratory settings, Terry (2005) performed two experiments.

He varied the sequence of commercials among participants so that recall for a specific commercial could be compared when the commercial occurs first, middle, or last in the list. In an immediate test, Terry (2005) found that college students recalled the first commercials in a list (primacy effect) and the last items (a recency effect) better than the middle items. In an end of session test, he found that primacy effect persisted but the recency effect disappeared. His results support the results of Pieters and Bijmolt (1997) and Zhao (1997) as well as other prior studies (e.g., Singh, Rothschild, & Churchill, 1988; Brown & Rothschild, 1993; Singh, Mishra, Bendapudi, & Linville, 1994).

Primacy Position Effect

To our knowledge, no other study has examined the recency or primacy effect in a classroom setting. Serial Position Theory Some theories have been used to explain the serial position phenomenon. For example, Ladd and Woodworth (1911) proposed a theory stating that items are associated with their position.

Items at the beginning of a list have clearly defined positions (first, second, third) and items at the end of a list have clearly defined positions (last, next to last). Items in the middle of a list have less clearly defined positions, leading to weaker associations between the item and position. Therefore, the worst performance in an association recall test should be for the item in the middle. However, according to Slamecka (1985), this theory, as with other associationists' model theories attempting to explain this phenomenon, was incomplete and overly simplified. Foucault (1928) proposed another theory based on two types of interference-proactive interference and retroactive interference. Proactive interference occurs when the first items in the list interfere with retention of the later items in the list; thus producing a primacy effect, or alternatively, the last items interfere with memory for preceding items; thus producing recency effect (Zhao, 1997).

In other words, proactive intereference occurs when earlier learning interferes with subsequent learning and retroactive interference occurs when new learning interferes with old learning. However, proactive interference is immune to retroactive interference and retroactive interference is immune to proactive interference. While proactive interference and retroactive interference enhance earlier and recent learning, respectively, they render items in the middle of the list to be the most difficult to recall because the items in the middle are susceptible to both proactive and retroactive interferences (see Figure 1). The problem with this theory, according to Neath (1998, p.

20), is Foucault's simplistic view in regard to determining the contribution of each form of interference. Foucault's view is that the results of a serial recall test should produce a symmetrical U-shaped curve. This prediction is consistent with the association effect theory proposed by Ladd and Woodworth (1911) (i.e., the worst performance on the serial recall test would be for the items in the middle). However, according to Ward (1937), this curve is not symmetrical; the worst performance occurs closer to the end than to the beginning of the list. Beginning with the cognitive movement of the mid-1950s, a new model of memory was beginning to take shape that used the computer as a metaphor for the memory process. It ultimately led to Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) dual-store model for memory. Although it is called dual-store, there are actually three stores: (1) sensory store, (2) short-term store, and (3) long-term store.

The flow of information through these stores is governed by a wide variety of control processes. Information from the environment first enters the sensory register where it remains for less than a second and is either coded or filtered out. Short-term store receives coded information from the sensory register and copies of information from the long-term store for use in the short term memory. Information in the short-term store is temporary and lasts only a few minutes but an individual may retain this information longer through studying, reflecting, and rehearsal. Short-term store is where we have working memory (immediate access memory) and this store governs response output. Information may be coded and transmitted to the long-term memory store through a consolidation process. FIGURE 1 OMITTED Atkinson and Shiffrin's model proposes a different explanation for the serial position effect, suggesting that the primacy effect would be stronger than the recency effect because items at the beginning of the list have more time to be rehearsed, coded, and consolidated, providing an opportunity to create a stronger stimulus-response bond for the earlier information.

Thus, this theory predicts that earlier information has an increased probability of being consolidated through studying, reflecting, and rehearsing and sent to the long-term store, increasing the odds that subjects will recall earlier information (primacy effect) better than recent information (recency effect). In support of the superiority of the primacy effect over the recency effect, Rundus and Atkinson (1970) demonstrated that there was a positive correlation between the number of times information was studied, reflected upon, and rehearsed and test performance. This is also consistent with Ward's (1937) finding stating that the worst performance is closer to the end than to the beginning of a list. Zhao (1997), looking at proactive and retroactive interferences in recalling commercials that appeared during a Super Bowl football game, found that subjects recalled the first commercial, in a string of commercials, better than the last commercial. Zhao also found that as the number of commercials preceding the last commercial (in a string) increased, the probability of recalling the last commercial decreased. However, according to Terry (2005), dual store theories have fallen out of favor as a result of alternative explanations for primacy effect provided by Zhao (1997) through his demonstration of proactive interference or alternatively, retroactive interference; and also by Greene, 1986, in his findings of long-term recency when certain experimental paradigms are used. Crowder (1976) provided explanations for serial position by classifying it in two broad categories: the passive and active categories.

The active theory posits that sequence effects will result from differential rehearsal and retrieval strategies. Using an example of the study by Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) to explain the active category, Terry (2005) stated that the first items in a list would receive more total rehearsals during presentation, whereas the last items would have a shorter amount of rehearsal; hence, a shorter retention interval, before memory testing occurs. An explanation for the passive theory is that serial position effects will result from processes inherent in the task (Terry, S. For instance, Zhao (1997), by comparing lists of different lengths, demonstrated that proactive interference accumulates across items and interferes with memory for the later items on a list.

We offer the following additional explanation for the superiority of the primacy effect. The earliest information was in the possession of the subjects longer than the middle information and the middle information was in the possession of the subjects longer than the recent information. Generally, recent information is delivered shortly before an examination is administered to students. Therefore, the earliest information has a longer time and more chances of being consolidated through studying, reflecting, and rehearsing than the middle information and the middle information has longer time and more chances of being consolidated than the recent information. Consequently, we expect students would perform better on recalling the earlier information than the middle information and also would perform better on recalling the middle information than the recent information. Thus, rather than producing a symmetrically U-shaped curve, the results of a dual-store model for memory should produce a negatively shaped curve in a serial position test. It is important to note that the model for storing information through sensory, short-term, and long-term memory and the process of creating the stimulus-response bond for the information stored are not limited to word lists; they also relate to all forms of information, large and small, that we process in memory.

The present experiment was not designed to distinguish one theory from the other, although the results were consistent with several theories; rather, this experiment was to examine the serial position effect on the performance of students who have to learn, understand, acquire knowledge, comprehend, reflect, rehearse, and recall a larger amount of blocks of information than recalling a list of words or digits under laboratory conditions. HYPOTHESES Based upon our preceding discussion of order and recency effects and related research (Baldwin & Howard, 1983; Baldwin, Pattison, & Toolson, 1989; Gruber, 1987; Howe & Baldwin, 1983; Paretta & Chadwick, 1975; Stout & Battista, 1991; Stout & Wygal, 1989,1990) as they apply to teaching and question order and the influence of location on the recency effect, we hypothesized that: Hypothesis 1: There will be no difference in the performance of students due to the order (sequential or reverse-sequential) by which information is taught to them.

Hypothesis 2: There will be no difference in the performance of students due to the order (sequential, reverse sequential or randomized) by which test items are presented to them. As discussed earlier, using interference, and association theories to provide an explanation for the serial position effect, Foucault (1928), and Ladd and Woodworth (1911), proposed that faster learning and greater recall of items occur at the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) in comparison to the middle of a list in word recall tests. If this phenomenon is applicable to classroom situations where students are tested on larger amounts of blocked information, then it is expected that students will exhibit greater recall on the block of information taught to them at the beginning and end in comparison to the block of information taught to them in the middle. Therefore, regardless of the order (sequential, or reverse-sequential) by which the information is taught to them, it is hypothesized that: Hypothesis 3: Subjects will perform better on the earlier and recent information than on the middle information taught to them. Also as discussed earlier, an alternative explanation provided for the serial position effect by Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) dual-store model for memory is that earlier information has a greater chance of being consolidated than the middle information and the middle information has a greater chance of being consolidated than the recent information.

As stated earlier, this model suggests that subjects would perform better on earlier information than on middle information and also would perform better on middle information than on recent information. Rundus and Atkinson (1970), Ward (1937), Glanzer & Cunitz (1966), Crowder (1976), Zhao (1997), and Terry (2005) provided support for this position. While the interference theory and the association theory do not predict the relative strengths of the primacy and recency effects, the dual-store model for memory predicts the results of a serial position effect test would show the primacy effect to be stronger than the recency effect. Accordingly, we hypothesized that: Hypothesis 4: Students will perform better on the earlier information than on the middle information and will perform better on the middle information than on the recent information taught to them. METHOD Participants The sample consists of 74 male students enrolled in a semester-long introductory managerial accounting course in their sophomore year.

Of the 74 students, 36 were enrolled in one section of the managerial accounting course while the remaining 38 were enrolled in the second section of the course. Of the 74 students, only 72 participated in the first examination. All 74 students participated in the second examination; 70 students participated in examination 3 while only 66 students participated in the final, comprehensive examination. The same professor taught for 50 minutes in each of the two sections of the course on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week. Participants provided demographic information on gender and age. We collected information on their GPAs from the Registrar's Office.

Procedure All the students were taught the basic background information such as cost terminologies as well as cost behavior including how to separate fixed and variable costs when costs are mixed. The background information constitutes a common body of information for understanding all the chapters included in this investigation.

For example, an understanding of the chapter on breakeven-analysis is not dependent on an understanding of the chapter on variance analysis or differential analysis or process costing or job order costing or capital budgeting, etc. However, these chapters are individually dependent on the understanding of the cost terminologies and cost behavior concepts that form the common body of the background information that we presented to the students earlier in the course. In addition, an understanding of any one of the chapters included in the investigation is not dependent on the specific scenarios or information contained in any one of the other chapters included in the investigation. We chose managerial accounting for examining the serial position theories because each chapter or concept taught can be examined independently of the other concepts taught to the students and the performance of the students on one chapter or concept is not dependent on their performance on the prior information other than the common body of information discussed earlier.

These characteristics enabled us to teach the chapters in any order. Being able to teach the chapters in any order also enabled us to compare the performances of different groups of students on the same chapter even though the chapter might have been taught to the two groups at different times during the information delivery period. An examination was given on the common background information to test the students' understanding of that information and to correct any deficiency prior to the presentation of the nine chapters that were included in the investigation. The nine chapters included in the investigation were divided into blocks of three chapters after which an examination was given. Three examinations were given prior to a comprehensive final on all the information included in the study. While each cycle of the three chapters was taught to one of the two sections in sequential order (e.g., chapters 14, 15, and 16 respectively), the same three chapters were taught to the second section in reverse sequential order (that is, chapters 16, 15, and 14 respectively). Thus, while chapter 14 represents the earlier information presented to section one (sequential section), the same chapter 14 represents the recent information presented to section two (reverse sequential section) of the course.

Further, while chapter 16 represents the recent information to the sequential order group, the same chapter 16 represents the earlier information to the reverse sequential group. Comparing the same information, that is, earlier chapter 14 vs. Recent chapter 14 and earlier chapter 16 vs.

Recent chapter 16 enabled us to control for the relative difficulty of the information being compared. In both sequential and reverse-sequential orders of teaching, chapter 15 represents the middle information. Table 1 presents the sequence by which each block of three chapters was taught to the students prior to each examination administered to them (see Table 1 below). The test items on each chapter were arranged in a different order: sequentially, reverse sequentially, and randomly. Test papers were distributed to students randomly. Of the seventy-two students who participated in examination 1, twenty students received test papers containing test items that were in sequential order, twenty-seven received those that were in reverse sequential order, and twenty-five received those that were in random order. Of the seventy-four who participated in examination 2, twenty-four received test items that were in sequential order, twenty-five received those in reverse sequential order, and twenty-five received those that were in random order.

Twenty-three of the seventy students who took part in the third examination received test items that were sequentially ordered; twenty-five received those that were reverse sequentially ordered, and twenty-two received those that were randomly ordered. The three versions of the test items were administered to all the students regardless of the order by which they were taught the concepts. This procedure enabled us to test whether the order of sequencing the test items had any influence on the students' performance aside from the effect, if any, of the order by which the chapters were taught to them. Standardized test items with a medium level of difficulty were selected from the test bank that accompanied the textbook to control for the level of difficulty of the test items in the four examinations administered to the students during the semester. Research Variables There were two independent variables in this study: (a) the order of teaching the chapters in the course (i.e., sequential vs. Reverse sequential-the position of the chapters in the sequential or reverse sequential order dictates the serial position of each chapter, whether it represents earlier or middle or recent information taught to the students) and (b) the order of sequencing the test items (i.e., sequential, reverse sequential and random order).

The dependent variable was measured in two ways: (a) by the test scores earned on each of the three chapters contained in each examination and (b) by the average test scores of each block of three chapters contained in the final comprehensive examination. The latter was used for the analysis of the comprehensive final whereby all the contents of the nine chapters taught during the semester were tested at once. The students' scores on chapters 14, 15, and 16 contained in the comprehensive final were averaged as a data point and treated as the earlier information with respect to the comprehensive final examination. Similarly, each student's mean score on chapters 17, 18, and 21 was considered a data point and regarded as the student's performance on the middle information with respect to the comprehensive final examination, while each student's scores on the last three chapters (i.e., chapters 19, 20, and 22) contained in the final examination was also averaged, treated as a data point, and evaluated as recent information with respect to the comprehensive final examination. RESULTS Preliminary Analysis A descriptive statistic was run to analyze the age distribution of the participants. The mean age is 19 years. Prior studies have shown that past academic performance is significantly related to future performance-i.e., current grades predict future grades (Astin, 1971; Lavin, 1965; and Odell, 1927).

Therefore, an analysis of variance was performed on the GPA (a measure of ability) of the two groups of students (sequential and reverse-sequential groups) who participated in each examination. This was to compare the ability of each group of students taking each of the examinations.

The results show that there is no significant difference in the GPA values between the two sections who participated in each of the four examinations including the final examination (Exam 1: (F(2,72) = 1.24, p.