Glossary
Serial Position Effect
What is the serial position effect?
The serial position effect describes how an item's position in a list affects the chance of remembering it. People often recall items at the beginning and end better than those in the middle.
The advantage for early items is called primacy; the advantage for recent, final items is called recency.
Murdock documented this pattern in a free-recall study. The result depends on how the list is presented and how memory is tested.
Why it matters
What comes to mind first may not represent the whole list. When every item matters, consult the written list instead of relying only on memory.
The related suffix effect describes how an extra item after a list can disrupt recall of its final items.