Discussion

Similarly to Glanzer's and Cunitz's experiment, this experiment demonstrated the

occurrence of a primacy effect in both conditions and a recency effect but only in the

immediate recall condition, thus supporting the hypothesis (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966). In both

experiments the results show that the serial position of the words on the list had an influence

on the proportion correct recall.

The results show that the condition itself did not have a significant influence on the

recall of words at the beginning and the middle of the list. However, the participants in the

immediate recall condition performed much better than those in the delayed recall condition

when it comes to the recall of the words at the end of the list. This supports the existence of a

recency effect and consequently the limited capacity and duration of short-term memory as

proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). Additionally, the occurrence of a primacy effect in

both conditions supports the theory that the transfer of information from short-term memory

to long-term memory is due to rehearsal (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).

However successful at replicating Galnzer’s and Cunitz’s experiment, the experiment

still had some limitations, one of which could be the specificity of the sample. The sampling

method being convenience sampling, poses the limitation that it might not be entirely

representative of the population as a whole, thus lacking external validity. The sample only

consisted of first year bachelor psychology students from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, all

of whom have graduated high school and most of whom are in their late teens or early

twenties. This, however, might not be of that much importance, especially that this

experiment was intended to test for the existence of short-term and long-term memory stores

and not evaluate the memory skills of the participants. The memory model (the modal model)

proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1966) is a universal model, i.e. it is intended to apply to
the whole population. It could be thus assumed that anyone whose brain is capable of

performing cognitive processes should have memory that operates in a virtually identical way.

The generalizability (or external validity) of the experiment could be further supported

by the results of the study of short-term memory of aphasic patients conducted by Locke and

Deck (1978). They found that in a free recall task aphasic patients, due to inability of

rehearsal, struggled with recalling the pictures in the early part of the list. The results of their

study also showed a recency effect, even in the condition where the patients were unable to

name the objects on the pictures presented to them. (Locke & Deck, 1978).Thus the findings

of the experiment could be generalized to the whole population.

The results could have, however, been influenced by the stress that the participants

might have been under during the experiment. It could be due to the fact that the experiment

took place at the time of their first tutorial at a new university. Not only were they in a new

environment and in a group of strangers, but also they were not informed prior to the tutorial

that the experiment would take place. For full disclosure, all subjects participated in the

experiment willingly and thus there were no ethical considerations raised. An extension to the

research could possibly include measuring cortisol levels in the participants in order to

exclude the influence of stress and anxiousness on the results of the study.