Evidence against a short-term-store account of long-term recency effects.
When subjects perform a distractor task before and after every item on a list, recall of the last item is much higher than recall of items from the middle of the list. Koppenaal and Glanzer (1990) have shown that this long-term recency effect can be eliminated by using, after the last item, a distractor task different from that used elsewhere on the list. They interpreted this finding as evidence in favor of a short-term-store account of long-term recency effects. This account is challenged by the results reported here. Practice either on the task or on time-sharing between the task and list items had little impact on the recency effect. Also, substantial recency effects were found when a different distractor task occurred after every list position. Thus, it is not true that long-term recency effects are found only when subjects have an opportunity to adapt to the distractor task. Our results are not consistent with a short-term-store account of recency effects.
Thapar
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Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106.
Greene
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D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D014825:Vocabulary