Three recency effects at the same time

Abstract

Lists of 15 items of a given category (e.g., riddles) were presented either by themselves or interwoven with 15 items of each of two other categories (e.g., sounds obtained from sound effect records and objects shown and named by the experimenter), and subjects recalled as many items as they could without regard to presentation order. Although presenting three categories of items together in this way reduced the proportion of items recalled, it had little effect on the shape of the serial position function. In particular, recall of each of the three categories showed a recency effect that closely resembled the effect obtained when the category was presented alone: in both cases, the effect was pronounced and spanned about seven positions. The implications of such category-specific recency effects are discussed.