Information Memory Processing and Retrieval: The Use of Information Theory to Study Primacy and Recency Characteristics of Ninth Grade Science Students Processing Learning Tasks.

Reported is another study related to the Project on an Information Memory Model. This study involved using information theory to investigate the concepts of primacy and recency as they were exhibited by ninth-grade science students while processing a biological sorting problem and an immediate, abstract recall task. Two hundred randomly selected students were given a biologically oriented classification sorting problem which required them to observe, for 15 minutes, a color slide composed of 14 different animals commonly recognized by ninth-grade students. Student scores were divided into low and high primacy (recall of items early in a list) and into low and high recency (recall of those items at the end of a list) groups. There were generally no significant differences between the low and high groups (primacy and recency) with respect to their set formation scores. When the groups were segregated on the basis of their ability to recall, there were significant differences between high and low groups. Total cognition scores were slightly greater for the recency students when compared to the corresponding ability group for primacy, suggesting that a slight but not significant advantage in recall belonged to the recency group. (Author/PEB)