The Serial Position Effect

The Serial Position Effect

The serial position effect is an event in which a person’s memory serves to recall items displayed at the beginning and end of a certain list significantly more than those displayed in the center of the presentation.

The Primacy Effect

The primacy effect is the phrase used to describe the occurrence in which a person remembers information at the front of a list.

The Recency Effect

The recency effect refers to the phenomena of remembering items better at the end of a list.

As regards the primacy effects, the long-term memory of a person is better equipped to store the initial items it is exposed to than those shown later in the list (Sikström, 2006). The strength of primacy effects is greatly reduced in instances where the items in a list being presented are done so in a fast manner because of the inability of people’s long-term memory to store it in such a short span of time. The reverse is true where items are presented more slowly thus people have more time to save items in their long-term memory.

On the other hand, recency effects occur where information presented later still exists in working memory and thus can be easily recollected. It’s not affected by the rapidity of presentation of information but by the duration of time elapsed and cases of an addition of more details after listing of items presentation. As such, words and things that are in the middle of the list are quickly dropped from the working memory before they can be programmed into the long-term memory because they have competition with other items and words.

References

Sikström, S. (2006). The isolation, primacy, and recency effects predicted by an adaptive LTD/LTP threshold in postsynaptic cells. Cognitive science, 30(2), 243-275.