Primacy and recency effects

[Transcendent]

Just curious, is there a reason why you're better at being able to recall items from the end of a list than at the beginning of a list?

[sillysmile]

Just curious, is there a reason why you're better at being able to recall items from the end of a list than at the beginning of a list?

yeah, the information at the end of the list is still present in STM's duration. If there is a delay of about 30 secs or more, between reading/hearing the list of items and attempting to recall the items, the recency effect is eliminated. (as those items are no longer in stm)

[Transcendent]

Yeah but the items at the beginning of the list are stored in your long term memory right? So technically shouldn't you be able to recall both items at the beginning and the end of the list with the same accuracy? (i don't think you'd need retrieval cues to recall the items from LTM if you had just learnt the information)

[sillysmile]

Yeah but the items at the beginning of the list are stored in your long term memory right? So technically shouldn't you be able to recall both items at the beginning and the end of the list with the same accuracy? (i don't think you'd need retrieval cues to recall the items from LTM if you had just learnt the information)

that's true, but I guess some of the words at the beginning of the list aren't successfully transferred into LTM
while pretty much all of the words at the end of the list are still present in STM.

[Transcendent]

ohh hmm that's a pretty good explanation. thanks

[sillysmile]

ohh hmm that's a pretty good explanation. thanks

my pleasure, hope I was of use.