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memory
You remember the beginning and the end, not the middle.
A 1962 study found that in lists of words, participants recalled the items at the beginning and end significantly better than the middle.
The serial position effect highlights the limits of your working memory. The beginning items are moved to long-term storage (primacy), and the end items are still fresh in your short-term memory (recency). The middle items are simply pushed out by the ongoing stream of new information.
Your memory is an editor, not a recorder.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Murdock, 1962, Journal of Experimental Psychology
- What the check found
- The 1962 Murdock study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology is correctly cited as the seminal work on the serial position effect in free recall.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.