You are running a study on the serial position effect in your lab. You decide to introduce a 30 second delay at the end of the word list and have participants count backwards by three's. Then they are asked to recall the word list. This procedure should reduce or remove the
A)primacy effect
B)recency effect
C)episodic effect
D)source confusion effect
E)icon effect

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Introducing a delay and having participants count backwards by three's interferes with their short-term memory. This specifically targets and reduces the recency effect, which is the tendency to remember the last items in a series due to their still being in short-term memory. The primacy effect, related to the tendency to remember items presented at the beginning of a list, remains largely unaffected by this procedure.

You Are Running a Study on the Serial Position Effect