The serial-position effect is the tendency for people recalling a list of items to remember the items at the beginning and end of the list more accurately than the items in the middle. It is understood as the product of two separate mechanisms: a primacy effect, in which early items benefit from extra rehearsal and have already moved into long-term memory, and a recency effect, in which the most recent items are still held in short-term working memory at the moment of recall. The pattern was named for the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, from his pioneering self-experimentation on memory, published in English translation as On Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology in 1913.
Facts
Core ClaimIn free recall of a list, items at the start and end are remembered far better than items in the middle, because they are held in different memory systems, long-term for early items and short-term for recent ones. 1 First Described Year Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The effect is named for Ebbinghaus's pioneering self-experimentation on memory.
In Branch
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Serial-Position Effect
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.
1. Wikipedia: Serial-Position Effect
Wikimedia FoundationHistory section, Ebbinghaus 1913 English translation
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