Remembering Words In or Not In the List (A Psychology Paper)

We are assigned to individually conduct an experiment about memory by our psychology professor. His assigned study includes false memory, serial position effects, decayed memory, rehearsals and salience. Playing the thirteen words with 16 non-psych major ages 16 and above, we took some minutes of them to find out how much they will recall the words I recite given that I put distracters. I also aim to know what the most unforgettable word in the list is for them and vice versa.

Before we go through, let us define some term. Memory is a diverse set of cognitive capacity by which our histories animate and store information and experience. Experience can be composed of events which really happen, but can also include a pinch of imagination. It differs to perception because memory includes remembering experiences and events which are not happening now (Sutton, 2010). Without the use of memory, this study will not be possible and thus, I can’t imagine what life will be.

Before conducting the experiment, I first introduced myself to them. I just imitated the higher psych-major who also conducting a research to us. I explained the reason why I am doing this study and what are the goals to my participants. I told them the instructions to follow so that my experiment won’t be a mess. They agreed to the terms and conditions and I felt happy about it.

Second, I recited the 13 words to them. My participants are sometimes by a group, couple or individual. I gave each of them a piece of paper and a ball point pen. I also observed the environment if it is the best place to conduct the experiment to prevent bias and other unlikely stuffs. I recited it one-by-one, slowly, ensuring that my voice was audible enough to hear the words.

Then, after completing to recite those 13 words, I commanded them to write 1000 on their paper and minus it by 7. I instructed them to repeat it until I say stop. These tasks were actually a distracter task to prevent them from rehearsal or recalling the words to their minds. When two minutes had passed, I finally let them write the words they remembered after all those tasks. Some words had been forgotten by them but some are remembered because of different factors we will discuss latter.

After I finished conducting an experiment to them, I gave my gratitude towards their effort in participating. I explained all the concepts and factors that have an effect on remembering words. I also explained why I instruct them to do a mathematical operation, a distracter task. I applied all the knowledge I learned through participating in the experiments of my seniors.

Garnering 16 participants, where 5 are boys and 11 are girls, I gathered the result as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The Frequency of Recall for each Word in the List

Looking at the graph, 93.75% of participants remembered the first word ‘thread’ on the list and wrote it down on their paper while 25% remembered the last word ‘injection’. Observe also that middle words, except for some words, have low frequency of recall compared to the first and last word. This is called the serial position effect which is the tendency of information at the beginning (called ‘primary effect’) and end (called ‘recent effect’) part of a body of information to be remembered more accurately than in the middle part of information (Ciccarelli & White, 2009). Thus, this effect suggests that position matters in recalling things and that explains why the word ‘thread’ and ‘injection’ have a high frequency of recall.

There is another factor in remembering things aside from the serial position effect. This is what salience explains. It is a distinctive stimulus in relation to context or in a simpler word; we remember things that stand out. In our list of words, 75% of participant got the word vagina. This word has a far distant connection among the list and thus, it pop-ups and stand out. Thus, it resembles to Von Restorff effect, also known as Isolation effect, which states we remember the unique item (Nelson, 1979).

Repeating the word in a list has also an effect in remembering. As ‘sharp’ was repeated three times, 62.5% remembered it and wrote it down. It implies to us that rehearsals, repeating of the word, make us encode the information accurately and even make it automatic (Benjamin & Jonides, 1985).

Figure 2: The Frequency of Recall of Words Not Presented on the List but They Thought They Were

Aside from the words presented on the list, some of my participants remembered words which are not on the list. These words were somewhat connected to the list’s context. They activate the spreading activities of words creating a false memory. Figure 2 will show to us the words which are not presented on the list but they thought they were.

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I was shocked by the results here, I expected the the word ‘needle’ to appear there on their sheets but I did not expect the other word such as ‘butterfly’. I thought, “What is the connection of the word ‘butterfly’ with the thoughts in the context?”

The word ‘needle’ was misremembered by 18.75%. They thought it was on the list because of similarity of this word form the other as well as ‘tool’, ‘scissors’, and ‘pants’. ‘Shark’ was also misremembered by them by 37.5% because of the similarity of sounds from the word ‘sharp’ like the word ‘trend’ from the word ‘thread’.

Those misremembered things are called false memory, remembering events or things that never happened nor really existed. It can be an alteration of the truth because we remember them quite different from the original (Roediger &McDermott, 1995) like the altering of spelling and sounds; creating words from the imagination like the words ‘butterfly’, ‘paint’, and ‘pant’; through suggestion of others or when a person is under hypnosis (Ciccarelli & White, 2009).

All in all, I enjoyed conducting the experiment. I learned a lot in this experience. Since, it was my first experiment as a psych major, I will never ever forget this. I t will be shielded, recalled, and remembered through the years.

References:

Bejamin, M. N. & Jonides, J. (1985). The effect of rehearsal on frequency recording. Bulletin of the psychonomic society. Psychonomic Society Inc. 23, 387-390

Ciccarelli, S. K. & White, J. N. (2009) Psychology 2^nd ed. Psychology and memory. Pearson Education, Inc. 246, 222-256

Nelson. D. L. (1979). Remembering pictures and words: Appearance, significance and name. In L. S. Cermak & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Levels of Processing in Human memory. Hillside, NJ: Erlbau, 45-76

Roentgen, H. L. & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803-81

Sutton, J. M. (2010) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosoph), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

NOTE: This paper, our own report in our first experiment as a psych major, is to be passed to Prof. Eric Manalastas.