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Cognitive psychology of human memory (thesaurus)

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Concept information

phenomenon > memory phenomenon > serial position effect > primacy effect

Preferred term

primacy effect  

Definition(s)

  • Better memory for the first items in a list.

Broader concept(s)

Related concept(s)

Synonym(s)

  • law of primacy
  • principle of primacy

Belongs to group

Bibliographic citation(s)

  • • Glanzer, M., & Cunitz, A. R. (1966). Two storage mechanisms in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5(4), 351‑360. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(66)80044-0

    [Study type: empirical study / Access: closed]
  • • Murdock, B. B. Jr. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(5), 482–488. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045106

    [Study type: empirical study / Access: closed]
  • • Zwaan, R. A., Pecher, D., Paolacci, G., Bouwmeester, S., Verkoeijen, P., Dijkstra, K., & Zeelenberg, R. (2018). Participant Nonnaiveté and the reproducibility of cognitive psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(5), 1968‑1972. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1348-y

    [Study type: empirical study, replication / Access: open]

Creator

  • Frank Arnould

Has study method(s)

Moderator variable(s)

  • • Anterograde amnesia: no primacy effect
  • • Association between items in the list: similar items accentuate the effect
  • • Interfering activity between each item presentation: decrease of the effect.
  • • List length : the effect is reduced when the number of items in the list increases
  • • Presentation rate: the effect is reduced when the item presentation rate increases.
  • • Type of recall: in serial recall, the primacy effect is larger than the recency effect.
  • • Word frequency: common words accentuate the effect compared to rare words
  • • Word imaginability: words that are easier to visualize mentally enhance the effect.

Dataset citation(s)

  • • Osth, A. F., & Farrell, S. (2018, August 2). Using response time distributions and race models to characterize primacy and recency effects in free recall initiation. https://osf.io/bkjqn

In other languages

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/P66-DZZPGZ5R-G

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