Order Effect In The Learning Of Social Conflicting Theory

Order effect is a kind of phenomenon that the sequences of stimulating influences people’s judgment. It’s including two forms:primacy effect and recency effect. Primacy effect means that the information presented first has greater effects than the information presented later on person’s impression, decision, and memory etc. On the contrary, recency effect means that the information presented last has stronger impact on people than the information presented before. In our complicated social activities, undergraduates are affected by many factors during college learning. What’s more, these factors will influence students’construction of knowledge and cognition judgment. To offer a better academic environment for the college students, it’s necessary to research the order effect in the process of learning. According to the research results abroad, there are various factors that influence the order effect. They are the nature of a task and the requirement of a task, individual psychological factors and the characteristic of memory etc. This paper focuses on the sequence and interval of time.This paper will use two experiments to investigate influences that the two factors produce. The subjects (N=225) are selected randomly. Every student joined in one experimental treatment. The sequence is independent variable1, including two levels:A�'B, B�'A. A and B are two conflicting theories. Therefore, there are two experimental treatments for each theory. Another independent variable is interval of time (7days). It is including two levels:presence and absence. It also has two experimental treatments. Lastly the dependent is viewpoint of subjects. Conclusions drawn from the studying are:(1)There is no sequence effect in students’choice when the two conflicting theories are in different information sequence and no time interval exists.(2)There is significant difference in students’choices when adding time interval (one week). Moreover, in different sequences with time interval, students incline to the theory that is read latest and the recency effect happens.