The recency effect is the tendency, when people are asked to freely recall a list of items, to remember items presented near the end of the list better than items presented earlier, particularly the middle items. It is the other half of the serial-position effect, first studied by the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, and the standard explanation is that the most recently presented items are still held in short-term or working memory at the moment of recall, giving them an advantage that does not depend on the deeper processing associated with the primacy effect. The recency effect is disrupted when a distraction task lasting roughly fifteen to thirty seconds is inserted between the end of the list and recall, but it persists reliably when recall happens immediately after study, regardless of the list's length or the speed at which it was presented; research has found that amnesic patients can show a normal recency effect alongside an impaired primacy effect, while some Alzheimer's patients show the reverse pattern.
Facts
Core ClaimThe recency effect is the tendency to recall items presented near the end of a list better than earlier items, because those items are still held in short-term or working memory at the moment of recall. 1 First Described YearWikipedia's Hermann Ebbinghaus article dates his monumental memory work, Uber das Gedachtnis, to 1885 and states in its findings summary that he documented the serial position effect (of which recency is one of the two named components); the year is drawn from the article's own publication date for that work, not a sentence naming 1885 and serial position together in one breath. Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
Associated With
First studied the serial-position effect, of which the recency effect is the other half.
In Branch
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Serial-Position Effect
Wikimedia Foundationlead section, third sentence
When asked to recall a list of items in any order (free recall), people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect).
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification (recency)
people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect).
2. Wikipedia: Hermann Ebbinghaus
Wikimedia FoundationFindings summary paragraph, following the 1885 Uber das Gedachtnis publication date given earlier in the articleQuote, Findings summary paragraph, following the 1885 Uber das Gedachtnis publication date given earlier in the article
Ebbinghaus had also documented the serial position effect, which describes how the position of an item affects recall.
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