Keisha can remember only the first two items and the last two items on the grocery list that her roommate just read to her over the phone. The other five items in between are gone. Her memory of things at the end of the list demonstrates the ________.
A) encoding specificity effect
B) primacy effect
C) recency effect
D) TOT effect

Question

Keisha can remember only the first two items and the last two items on the grocery list that her roommate just read to her over the phone. The other five items in between are gone. Her memory of things at the end of the list demonstrates the ________.
A) encoding specificity effect
B) primacy effect 
C) recency effect 
D) TOT effect

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The recency effect refers to the tendency to better recall items that are at the end of a list, such as in this case where Keisha can remember the last two items on the grocery list. The primacy effect, on the other hand, refers to the tendency to better recall items that are at the beginning of a list, and the encoding specificity effect refers to the notion that retrieval of information is improved when the context at retrieval matches the context at encoding. The TOT (Tip-of-the-Tongue) effect refers to the phenomenon of feeling that a word is "on the tip of your tongue" but not being able to retrieve it.

Keisha Can Remember Only the First Two Items and the Last