Chi Ioi Fong 1

IA Proposal Report
Modified Replication of Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) – ‘Two Storage Mechanisms in Free Recall’

Introduction
The process of memory storage and recall has long been an area of fascination within the
study of human behavior and cognition. In 1966, researchers Glanzer & Cunitz conducted
what is now a classic study into the nature of memory recall, investigating the presence of
two separate – short-term and long-term – storage mechanisms within the human mind.
Using experimental manipulations, they aimed to affect said mechanisms and observe the
effect of such manipulations on the serial position effect, or the observed tendency for
items at the beginning and end of a series to be recalled best and items in the middle to be
recalled worst. In particular, the second experiment conducted as a part of the study
involved the use and manipulation of a ‘delay condition’ between exposure and recall.
Participants, 46 enlisted Army men, were shown several word lists, with each word
appearing in sequence (one at a time) with a blank gap between words. After being shown
the entire list, participants were then instructed to either immediately attempt to perform
free recall (i.e. recall of items/words in any order) of as many words as possible from the
list shown to them or to perform a distractor task – counting up from a single-digit number
for a duration of either 10 or 30 seconds – before recalling as many words as possible from
the list shown.
Glanzer & Cunitz found that the presence of a delay significantly impacted recall of words
in the lattermost third of the shown word lists (words in the last five positions of a 15-
word list), with a 10-second delay sufficient to remove most of the ‘end peak’ (recency
effect) and a 30-second delay causing the complete removal/absence of said ‘end peak’ as
typically present in a graphed serial position curve of the probability of the recall of
words/items in each position of a sequential series. Thus, Glanzer & Cunitz concluded that
their results lent support to “the hypothesis of two distinct storage mechanisms”, one being
a short-term memory store with limited duration. These results would later be used to
support the creation of Atkinson & Shiffrin’s (1968) Multi-Store Model of Memory, or MSM,
which posits that there are three stores of memory – the ‘Sensory Store’, a store with
unlimited capacity but extremely short duration (~a few seconds) into which information
first enters the mind, the ‘Short Term Store’, in which limited information from the Sensory
Store (that which is paid attention to) is retained for a short duration (~half a minute) to
be rehearsed, lost/forgotten, or transferred to the third store, the ‘Long Term Store’, where
unlimited information is stored for an indefinite amount of time, capable of being retrieved
back to the Short Term Store for future procedure.
Thus, this proposed replication will attempt to, through a modified limited replication of
Glanzer & Cunitz (1966)’s original study’s second experiment (in particular, only using a
30-second delay condition compared to a no-delay control condition), investigate the
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assertion of MSM that the Short Term Store of memory itself has limited capacity and
duration. It is thus hypothesized that the group undergoing delayed recall (henceforth to be
referred to as the ‘delayed recall group’) will recall significantly fewer words from the last
five positions of the word list than the group undergoing recall without delay (henceforth
to be referred to as the ‘immediate recall group’). Hence, the null hypothesis of this
replication is that there will be no significant decrease in the number of words recalled
from the last five positions of the word list between the delayed recall group and the
immediate recall group.
Participants
The likely participants of this replication would be the current (2018-19) Form 5 class at
School of the Nations Macau (henceforth to be referred to as ‘SON’) of 28 (?) students in
total. There are some considerations in regards to this choice of sampling, both
methodological and ethical.
Firstly, these participants, while not being coerced into participation in any way, are still
held by the teaching staff of SON to the expectation of participation in this experiment – to
ensure ethical standards are upheld, it must be ensured that this expectation does not
create any undue stress on the participants or coerce them indirectly into agreeing to
participate in a situation where they would normally refuse to. Additionally,
methodologically, the fact that these participants might be participating as a result of an
external expectation to do so rather than self-derived motivation could result in the ‘screw
you’ effect, in which participants would deliberately attempt to disrupt the experimental
tasks by not attempting said tasks to the fullest of their ability. Thus, participants’ behavior
should be monitored closely during the study to ensure that, firstly, no participants are
experiencing undue/excess stress as caused by the experimental tasks and that, secondly,
participants are visibly attempting to perform the experimental tasks to the fullest of their
ability (i.e. are not visibly exhibiting signs of ignoring the experimental tasks, e.g. visibly in
deep thought, brow furrowed, writing on given paper, etc.).
Additionally, the limited sample size (a result of the limitations of the resources available
for this experiment) and the fact that participants all come from similar (upper middle
class) socioeconomic backgrounds might influence the ecological validity of the experiment
and hence its generalizability. Given all participants would be students with high degrees of
education (continuous secondary education since kindergarten to the present) who would
also likely use their memory stores and cognitive process of rehearsal often, moreso than
some other population groups, it would be plausible to question participants’ cognitive
abilities and processes relative to the general populace, particularly subsets of said
populace lacking such education and the socioeconomic background of the sample. As it is
impossible to control for such variables by introducing a more diverse sample or by
balancing the groups using, say, matched-pair design given the lack of sufficient knowledge
of participants’ individual backgrounds, given the limitations in resources available for this
experiment, this will be controlled for using random assignment which, in theory, should
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result in balanced groups and addressing relevant participant variables in the

discussion/evaluation portion of the full study.
Material List
 Experimental list: One 15-slide timed digital slideshow (each slide playing for one
second, with a two-second blank gap between words), each slide containing one
monosyllabic noun printed in black with a blue background
o Two variations:
 Immediate recall indication (telling Participants to begin free recall
immediately)
 Delay/distractor mechanism (telling Participants to count up from a
random number from 0-9) 30 seconds long
 Practice lists: Two 5-slide timed digital slideshows (each slide playing for one
second, with a two-second gap between slides), each slide containing one
monosyllabic noun printed in black with a blue background
o One list would be example of immediate recall variation, the other an
example of delay/distractor (see above)
o These two practice lists would not share any words with each other nor the
experimental list
 Computer & projection equipment
 Supply of blank paper
 Stopwatch
 Pens
 Desks/chairs
 Empty room, preferably with minimal visual & auditory distraction (e.g. background
noise, excessive decoration, etc.) present
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Procedure
1. Prior to the commencement of the experiment, participants are pre-assigned into
groups randomly. The groups are evenly assigned one of the four counterbalanced
conditions as such:
a. Immediate Practice List 1st; Delayed Practice List 2nd; Immediate
Experimental List
b. Delayed Practice List 1st; Immediate Practice List 2nd; Immediate
Experimental List
c. Immediate Practice List 1st, Number Practice List 2nd, Delayed Experimental
List
d. Delayed Practice List 1st; Immediate Practice List 2nd; Delayed Experimental
List
2. Participants are brought into the room and told to sit down independently, spaced
evenly across the room, without communicating with each other in any way (this
will be maintained throughout the experiment). It must be assured that all
participants can see the projector screen clearly.

3. Participants are informed of their rights & introduced to the experiment;

specifically, Participants told the following:

“You will be given a pen and a sheet of paper and shown a list of words on the
projector screen. Each word will be shown one at a time with a gap between words.
You must try to memorize as many of the words shown on the screen as you can.

After all the words have been shown, if a hashtag appears on the screen, I will say the
word “write” and you must immediately try to remember and write down all the words
you remember. However, if a number is shown on the screen, you must start counting
up out loud from that number. For example, if the number eight is shown on screen,
you must start counting up out loud from eight, for example “eight, nine, ten, eleven”
and so forth, until I say “write”, after which you must try to remember and write down
all the words you remember.

Three lists of words will be shown to you in total. Do you have any questions?”

Any and all of the participants’ questions regarding the clarity of the procedure are
to be answered to the fullest extent possible without revealing the aim of the
experiment and/or the manipulation.
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4. Participants are provided with pen & paper and exposed to the two practice lists
(counterbalanced design determines order of practice lists) to further familiarize
them with the procedure; i.e.:
a. Participants are shown the timed slideshow of words; experimenter reads
out each word as it appears on screen
b. After list is fully shown:
i. If hashtag (#) sign appears, the experimenter will say “write” and
participants must attempt to write all the words from the list they
recall on their paper.
ii. If a number from 0-9 appears, participants must count up from that
number out loud. The experimenter measures 30 seconds with the
stopwatch; upon reaching 30 seconds, the experimenter will say
“write” and participants must attempt to write down all the words
they recall.
c. Participants have one (1) minute to complete their recall of the list; time will
be counted by the experimenter using the stopwatch. Immediately after this
period of time, the experimenter will go around and check that all words
written down by each participant is legible.
5. Participants then exposed to the experimental list, repeating steps 4a-c; however,
for step c, Participants given 2mins (i.e. an additional 1min on top of the original 1)
to complete their recall of the list.
6. Participants are allowed to leave & reminded of their ethical rights with a full
debriefing to be conducted at a later date after the full conclusion of the experiment.
Design
For the most part, this experiment’s procedure as detailed above is intended to be a
replication of the procedure conducted by Glanzer & Cunitz in their original 1966 study’s
second experiment with some modifications due to resource limitations and for additional
control over results.
As in the original experiment, the manipulation between groups is the presence or absence
of a delay with a distractor task as detailed in the procedure below. However, unlike the
original experiment, which had two manipulations – a 10-second and 30-second delay, this
replication will only use a single manipulation of a 30-second delay. As Glanzer & Cunitz
(1966) state that “With a 30-sec delay there is no trace at all of the end peak [from the
serial position effect]”, the use of only the 30-second delay manipulation should be
sufficient to test Atkinson & Shiffrin’s MSM and its assertion of the limited-duration nature
of the Short Term Store.
As described prior, participants will be exposed to two practice lists, one demonstrating the
delayed recall condition and one the immediate recall condition in order to ensure that
participants are familiar with the experimental procedure prior to the actual experimental
task (the experimental list consisting of 15 words). Glanzer & Cunitz’s 1966 study
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originally utilized three practice lists and fifteen experimental lists, thus making it a
repeated measures experiment; however, due to time and resource limitations, it is
unfeasible for this replication to utilize such a method. Thus, the experiment is modified to
be effectively an independent measures design with only one experimental list; however,
participants are still exposed to both conditions by way of the practice lists which are
intended to expose them to both conditions before the actual experimental task.
Additionally, the order that the two practice lists are shown to participants in this
replication will be counterbalanced; while Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) does not mention the
use of any counterbalancing, for this replication counterbalancing will be utilized to ensure
minimal impact of the order of the practice lists being shown to the participants on any
experimental results resulting from the third, experimental list, particularly given that the
exposure of participants to both delayed and immediate recall procedures/conditions is
judged to be essential to ensure participants are clear with the procedure of the
experiment prior to the commencement of the experimental task (step 5 of procedure). It is
possible that this might induce demand characteristics in participants, however, the
likelihood of this is judged to be unlikely given that participants are not making any
judgments but rather being tested on memory which should not be impacted by priming to
the presence of two conditions.
Expected Findings
If the research hypothesis is supported, it is expected that there will be a significant
decrease in the probability that words in the last five positions of the experimental list will
be recalled by participants in the delayed recall condition (encompassing both
counterbalanced conditions) versus the immediate recall condition; as MSM asserts that
the short-term store has limited capacity and duration and Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) found
that a 30-second delay was sufficient to completely remove the “end peak” seen in a serial
position curve of memory recall of items in series, participants subjected to the delayed
recall condition should thus recall significantly fewer words in the last five positions of the
list overall than participants subjected to the immediate recall condition.
Vice versa, if the null hypothesis is supported, there would be no significant difference in
the probability that words in the last five positions of the experimental list would be
recalled by participants between the delayed and immediate recall conditions. This would
thus contradict the assertions of MSM and the results found by Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) as
described in the previous paragraph.