Sanasarjamuistitehtävä

Sanasarjamuistitehtävä, also known as a serial recall task, is a common experimental paradigm used in cognitive psychology to study memory. In this task, participants are presented with a sequence of items, typically words or numbers, and are then asked to recall them in the exact order they were presented. The length of the sequence can vary, and the items are usually presented briefly, followed by a recall interval.

The primary goal of a sanasarjamuistitehtävä is to measure the capacity and performance of short-term memory, specifically concerning sequential information. Researchers can manipulate various factors to observe their effect on recall accuracy. These factors include the number of items in the sequence, the similarity between items (e.g., phonological similarity), the presentation rate, and the presence of distracting information during the recall interval.

Performance in this task is often analyzed by calculating the proportion of correctly recalled sequences or by examining the number of items recalled correctly within each sequence. Errors can include omitting items, adding extra items, or recalling items in the wrong order. The typical finding in a sanasarjamuistitehtävä is that recall accuracy decreases as the length of the sequence increases, reflecting the limited capacity of short-term memory. This task is valuable for understanding how information is encoded, stored, and retrieved from memory, and it has been instrumental in developing theories of memory processes.