title: Recency and suffix effects in serial recall of musical stimuli.
abstract: Auditory presentation of verbal items leads to larger recency effects in recall than visual presentation. This enhanced recency can be eliminated if a stimulus suffix (an irrelevant sound) follows the last item. Four experiments tested the hypothesis that recency and suffix effects in serial recall result from a speech-specific process. It was demonstrated that serial recall of musical notes played on a piano exhibited substantial recency effects. These recency effects were reduced when the list items were followed by either a piano chord or the word start. However, a white-noise suffix had no effect on recency. This pattern of data is consistent with current work on auditory perception and places constraints on theories of recency and suffix effects.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D009146:Music; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011932:Reading; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception