DanielR IB Psychology HL

Today we did the fourth experiment on our memory. We listened to a set of 14 words, at about one second each. Then we wrote down what we remembered. Out of the 14 words, I remembered 8, which is a little lower than the class average. Everyone remembered the first word, and nearly as much remembered the last word. Three people (10 students in class) remembered hearing a word that was not actually said. A word was repeated three times, and so everyone got it. Weird-sounding word were also popular. The chunking process was supposed to work, but we are not familiar with that phrase, therefore the chunking didn’t.

There is an evidence of the serial position effect. Everyone wrote down the first word “bed”, and 6 people remembered the last word “dream”. Six people are not too bad, compared to the word “turn”, which only 3 people recalling it. The word “night” was repeated three times, and obviously everyone got it. The process of rehearsal enhances human's memory recall. The word "sleep" was a trick word, although it was a great example of the memory reconstruction process. Three people claimed that they heard the word "sleep". This shows how they had reconstructed their own memory, caused by associating with the actual words. The words "fatigue" and "artichoke" both had strange sounding, which made some people remember them. The process of chunking in the phrase "toss and turn" didn't work with us very well, since we don't usually use that phrase in our daily lives. Six people recalled "toss", but only three recalled "turn".

This experiment really helps to indicate the different techniques of memory and how it had effects on the person.