title: Recency, primacy, and memory: reappraising and standardising the serial position curve.
abstract: In this paper we consider the serial position curve in immediate verbal free recall. A large literature has argued that two components of the serial position curve, recency and primacy, reflect the functioning respectively of short-term and of long-term memory. However, there are a number of difficulties in interpreting the recency effect as a phenomenon uniquely associated with short-term memory. Moreover, the serial position curve has been used widely for clinical investigations in patients with memory deficits. This is despite the lack of norms for the measures derived from the curve. We present a set of standardised norms based on 321 Italian normal subjects. These norms are shown to be applicable both to an English speaking population, and to three groups of brain damaged-patients, namely Alzheimer's, amnesics, and frontals. The standardised norms offer a clinical and experimental tool which, coupled with a multiple single case approach, allows us to show dissociations and double dissociations among the performance patterns obtained from all three pathological groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of a possible interpretation of the recency effect as a emergent property of all types of memory system, including verbal short-term memory. Taking into account previous literature as well as our own data, the recency effect in immediate verbal free recall is here interpreted in terms of a two-component view of verbal short-term memory.
authors.affiliation: Neurology Department, University of Milan, San Paolo Hospital, Italy.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Capitani
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Della Sala
authors.forename: R H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Logie
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Spinnler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D000647:Amnesia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012016:Reference Values; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012691:Serial Learning