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POSITION EFFECTS (also SERIAL POSITION EFFECTS)

المؤلف:  John Field

المصدر:  Psycholinguistics

الجزء والصفحة:  P216

2025-09-28

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POSITION EFFECTS (also SERIAL POSITION EFFECTS)

The ability to recall certain words according to where they occur in a list. A primacy effect favours words at the beginning of the list; the theory is that the listener has time to consolidate these words by rehearsing them; as a result, they are successfully transferred to long term memory. A recency effect favours words at the end of the list. This is ascribed to the listener being able to retrieve the words from short term memory, where they are still held.

The difference between the two effects is demonstrated by asking subjects to perform an interference task (such as counting or doing simple calculations) before the list is recalled. In these circumstances, the primacy effect is sustained, but the recency effect disappears. This suggests that the words which feature in the recency effect are vulnerable to being dislodged by new incoming short-term information.

The recency effect is more marked for spoken words than it is for written. This accords with a hypothesis that both types of word are held in working memory in some kind of phonological code. Written words are subject to a recoding process, whereas spoken words are encoded as they stand and are easier to retrieve.

See also: Memory, Working memory