Lesson 3.1.1.2.4

3.1.1.2.4 Murdock's serial position curve study Quiz: AQA Psychology, Unit 1

20 questions

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Lesson 3.1.1.2.4, Murdock's serial position curve study: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA GCSE Psychology (8182), Unit 1: Memory, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What type of recall did Murdock's participants use in his serial position study?

    • Cued recall, recalling the words when given a word that starts with the same letter
    • Free recall, recalling the words in any order
    • Recognition, deciding whether each word had appeared in the earlier list
    • Serial recall, recalling the words in the exact order of presentation

  2. What shape did Murdock's serial position curve show?

    • A straight line showing that every word in the list was recalled equally often
    • An inverted U shape, with better recall in the middle of the list than at its ends
    • A U-shaped curve, with better recall at the start and end of the list than in the middle
    • A rising line showing that words at the end were recalled much less often than the start

  3. What kind of word list did Murdock use?

    • Lists of unrelated words presented one after another
    • Lists of numbers that the participants had to recall in the exact order given
    • Lists of related words that all belong to the same category, such as different animals
    • Lists of pictures shown on a screen one after another during each learning trial

  4. Which two effects did Murdock's serial position curve demonstrate?

    • Interference and decay effects, both shown across the whole list of words
    • Serial and cued recall effects, both shown when the participants were given cues
    • Primacy and recency effects
    • Context and state-dependent effects, both shown when the learning place was changed

  5. Murdock's participants recalled early list words best. What does this suggest?

    • Early words were coded as images, which are easier to recall than words in lists
    • Early words were held in sensory memory until the recall stage of the test began
    • Early words were displaced by later words in long-term memory during the recall stage
    • Early words were more likely to be transferred into long-term memory

  6. Why did Murdock use free recall instead of serial recall?

    • It forces participants to recall the words in the same order as presentation, removing primacy
    • It shows which words were recalled first without forcing the order of recall
    • It removes the recency effect, so that only the primacy effect can be measured in the test
    • It makes participants use recognition, which is easier to score accurately than recall is

  7. If Murdock had used a distractor task after the list, what would be expected for the recency part?

    • Recency would disappear completely, because the last words would move into sensory memory
    • Recency would be unchanged, because the distractor task only affects long-term memory
    • Recency would be increased, because the last words would be rehearsed during the distractor task
    • Recency would be reduced, because the last words would be displaced from short-term memory

  8. Murdock's study supported the multi-store model. Which finding gives the strongest support for two separate stores?

    • Recall was random across positions, which shows that no store is involved in recalling words
    • Primacy and recency effects differ, which suggests two stores, one for each effect
    • Recall was the same at every position, which suggests one store handles all of the items
    • Recall was highest in the middle, which suggests a single store that is strongest at the centre

  9. What was the main purpose of recording the position of each word in Murdock's study?

    • To measure how long each word stayed in the sensory store before it decayed in the lab
    • To check whether participants could recall the words in the exact order of presentation
    • To count how many words each participant could recognise as having been on the list
    • To see whether words at the start, middle and end of the list were recalled at different rates

  10. Which feature of Murdock's curve best links to short-term memory?

    • The middle part, where words are poorly recalled because they are coded only as images
    • The recency part, where the last words are recalled well when recall starts straight away
    • The overall height of the curve, which shows the total capacity of long-term memory
    • The primacy part, where the first words are recalled well because they are in sensory memory

  11. Which limitation of Murdock's study is most relevant to how far the results apply to real life?

    • The curve only shows primacy, so recency cannot be studied with word lists in any situation
    • Lists of unrelated words are artificial, so recall may not reflect how people remember meaningful information
    • Participants were asked to recall the words in order, so the results cannot show primacy at all
    • Lists were too long for any participant to recall, so the results cannot be measured reliably

  12. A participant recalls the first and last words of a list well but not the middle. Which result is this?

    • A declining curve showing recall getting worse with each word as the list goes on
    • An inverted curve showing the middle words recalled best of all in that participant's list
    • A linear curve showing equal recall at every position in the list for that participant
    • A U-shaped serial position curve for that participant

  13. Who conducted the serial position curve study described in the specification?

    • Murdock, who used lists of words in a free recall task
    • Gibson, who studied direct perception of the environment in everyday life
    • Bruner, who studied how expectations affect what people perceive
    • Bartlett, who studied memory for a folk story from another culture

  14. In Murdock's serial position study, what was the main outcome measure?

    • The accuracy of the order in which each participant recalled the words in the test
    • The number of words each participant correctly recognised as having been on the list
    • The proportion of words recalled from each position in the list
    • The time taken by each participant to read each word aloud during the learning phase

  15. Which pattern from a replication would count against the two-store explanation of the curve?

    • A flat serial position curve, with no difference in recall between the start, middle and end
    • A curve where recency is reduced after a distractor task, as the two-store account predicts
    • A curve where recall at the start is higher than in the middle, as the model would expect
    • A U-shaped curve with a clear primacy part and a clear recency part in the results

  16. A teacher uses the serial position findings to order a revision list. Which advice follows?

    • Put the most important items after a long distractor task, so that the recency effect is strongest
    • Put the most important items in the middle of the list, where they receive the most rehearsal
    • Put the most important items at random positions, so that no position has an advantage
    • Put the most important items at the start and end of the list, where they are best recalled

  17. Which feature of Murdock's method means it can test long-term memory as well as short-term memory?

    • Free recall of early items from a long list, which are in long-term memory after the list ends
    • Serial recall, which forces participants to hold each word in sensory memory before recall
    • Recognition, which needs participants to remember exactly where each word was placed in the list
    • A list of numbers, which uses semantic coding in long-term memory only during the test

  18. A replication finds a strong primacy effect but no recency effect. Which explanation fits the model best?

    • The last items were held in sensory memory, which fades before recall begins and so removes recency
    • A delay before recall cleared the last items from short-term memory, leaving only early items in long-term memory
    • Participants rehearsed the last items so often that they were transferred into sensory memory instead
    • The early items were never encoded, so primacy must come from the sensory store rather than long-term memory

  19. Why does Murdock's result suggest that recall depends on the position of an item in a list?

    • Recall depends on the colour or size of each word, which is a feature unrelated to the position in the list
    • Recall depends only on the length of the list, and the position of an item has no effect on recall
    • Items at the end are always recalled first whatever their position, so position matters only for recognition
    • Items in different positions have different chances of being transferred or held, so their recall differs

  20. In a 30-word list, the middle of the curve is flat and low. Which explanation is best supported by the model?

    • Middle items were stored in sensory memory, which holds them for longer than the start or end
    • Middle items were rehearsed too much, which leads to their loss from long-term memory later on
    • Middle items were all coded as images, which cannot be recalled at all in a free recall test
    • Middle items were displaced from short-term memory and not yet transferred to long-term memory

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