Aim: To investigate if there are separate memory stores (STM and LTM).
Method: A lab experiment was conducted. Participants were presented with a list of words at the rate of one per second. Immediately after, partipcants were asked to recall them in any order (free recall).
Results: Murdock found that words presented either early in the list or at the end were more often recalled, but the ones in the middle were more often forgotten.
Conclusions: Murdock suggested that words early in the list were put into LTM (primacy effect) because the person has time to rehearse the word, and words from the end went into STM (recency effect). Words in the middle of the list had been there too long to be held in STM (due to displacement) and not long enough to be put into LTM.