Core_Study-_Terry

Core Study: Terry (2005) Aim: to test the validity of Terry’s theory of Memory. Hypotheses: A. Students will recall the 1st adverts shown equally well in immediate or delayed recall. B. Students will not recall later adverts shown with a delay in recall. Variables: The independent variable was the different advertisements shown to the participants. The dependent variable was if the participants recalled the adverts immediately after they were presented or whether the participants could recall the ads after a delay. Background Research: Terry decided to test people’s memories of television advertisements. Each Advert was about 10 months old at the time of the experiment. Also each advert was of a different product. The ads were more than 30 seconds long and were presented in groups of fifteen. Terry used students as his participants. To make sure that his experiment was accurate he used the same group of students took part in both conditions. During the delay they were given a written task to do for 3 minutes. The dependant variable was how many brand names the participants could recall. They could recall them in any order they wished in both immediate and delayed recall. Results: The results generally showed a serial position effect. This means that whether an advert was recalled depended on where it was in the list (its serial position), not on what the product was. When the participants recalled the brand names straight away, there was a primary effect and a recency effect. Overall Terry’s experiment showed that participants showed to have good recall of the first few adverts (the primary effect) and a good recall of the last few adverts (the recency effect). This was put into the participant’s long term memory.