List-Length Effect

The list-length effect is the finding, in memory research, that as the number of items on a list to be remembered increases, the proportion of items a person can successfully recall from that list decreases, even though the total number of items recalled may still rise. The effect is generally attributed to longer lists leaving fewer opportunities to rehearse each individual item into a durable memory trace. Researchers have found the effect to be robust in free recall of word lists, though some studies suggest it disappears in recognition memory once certain confounds in how the lists are constructed are controlled for.