Serial position effects in immediate serial recall

Deconfounding Serial Recall

“…This figure shows all of the data from trials in which the cued starting position was Input Position 1. As mentioned, previous studies of serial recall with regular, ungrouped lists have shown that visual presentation results in a severe decline across serial positions and a slight upturn at the end of the list (e.g., Jahnke, 1963;Madigan, 1971). Such a function is shown in the top panel of the figure.…”

“…Around this time, also, the role of serial recall in daily life increased with the proliferation of telegraphs in the 1850s and the invention of the telephone in 1876. Serial recall became a popular topic of research among information processing psychologists (for comprehensive reviews see Harcum, 1975;Kausler, 1974;Murdock, 1974;Neath, 1998) and has remained so.Many studies of serial recall with regular, ungrouped lists (e.g., Jahnke, 1963;Madigan, 1971) have shown, in the visual modality, a severe decline across serial positions and then a slight upturn at the end of the list (i.e., a large primacy effect and a small recency effect); in the auditory modality, a similar function at the beginning of the list but a much larger upturn at the end (i.e., large primacy and recency effects). Recently, there has been a proliferation of mathematical models attempting to explain the pattern of immediate serial recall (e.g…”

“…One assumption (Lewandowsky, 1999, p. 444) is of the "decreasing strength with which successive list items are encoded," a primacy gradient assumption that is widespread; indeed, Lewandowsky termed it "virtually ubiquitous." Serial recall typically shows a large primacy effect and a much smaller recency effect, at least in the visual modality (e.g., Jahnke, 1963;Madigan, 1971), and the primacy gradient is one popular explanation of that fact. In keeping with that notion, for example, the primacy model (Page & Norris, 1998) yields an activation value with a gradient favoring early list items.…”

Serial-Position Effects in Motor Short-Term Memory

“…While the present study likewise found linear order of recall for three movements, when the list of movements was increased to six and nine, a bowing of the recall curve was observed. The obvious problem apparent in the Cratty and Magill statements was that neither considered the list-length variable that has been previously consistently reported in serial verbal-memory studies (e.g., Jahnke, 1963;Murdock, 1968).…”

“…That is, first and last items of a list are recalled best, while middle items are recalled poorest (e.g., Jahnke, 1963;Murdock, 1968). This bowed serial position curve does not describe, however, the results of the few studies in the motor domain that have investigated this issue.…”