Invitation to Psychology

284 ChaPteR 8 Memory

at the end of the list (the recency effect); the items

in the middle will tend to drop away (Bhatarah,

Ward, & Tan, 2008; Johnson & Miles, 2009).

A serial-position effect occurs when you are intro-

duced to a lot of people at a party and find you can

recall the names of the first few and the last few,

but almost no one in between.

According to the three-box model, primacy ef-

fects happen because the first few items in a list are

rehearsed many times and so are likely to make it to

long-term memory and remain memorable. Recency

effects occur because at the time of recall, they are

plucked from short-term memory, where they are

still sitting. The items in the middle of a list are not

so well retained because by the time they get into

short-term memory, it is already crowded with the

first few items. As a result, middle items often drop

out of short-term memory before they can be stored

in long-term memory. The problem with this expla-

nation is that the recency effect sometimes occurs

even after a considerable delay, when the items at the

end of a list can no longer be in short-term memory

(Davelaar et al., 2004). Further, the serial-position

effect can also occur with memories of past personal

experiences, such as the soccer games you played

during the last season. The serial-position curve,

therefore, remains something of a puzzle.

Simulate the Experiment Serial Position Effect

at MyPsychLab

Episodic memory allows us to mentally travel

not only backward in time but also forward, by

imagining possible future experiences (Schacter,

2012). We draw on our episodic memories to

construct scenarios of what might happen and

then rehearse how we might behave. In fact, the

same brain regions involved in retrieving personal

memories, notably the hippocampus and parts of

the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, are also

activated when we imagine future events (Addis,

Wong, & Schacter, 2007). Patients who cannot

retrieve episodic memories because of damage to

the hippocampus often cannot envision future epi-

sodes either, even in response to such simple ques-

tions as “what will you do tomorrow?” (Hassabis &

Maguire, 2007). The “time-travel” function of epi-

sodic memories is often motivating, because un-

less people are pessimists or depressed, they tend

to forget negative episodic memories faster than

positive ones, leaving them with a forgiving past

and rosy future (Szpunar, Addis, & Schacter 2012).

From Short-Term to Long-Term Memory: A

Puzzle. The three-box model of memory is of-

ten invoked to explain an interesting phenomenon

called the serial-position effect. If you are shown

a list of items and are then asked immediately to

recall them, your recall will be best for items at

the beginning of the list (the primacy effect) and

serial-position effect
The tendency for recall
of the first and last items
on a list to surpass recall
of items in the middle of
the list.

Recite & Review

Recite: To find out whether this section made its way into long-term memory, say out loud everything

you can about the sensory register, short-term memory, chunking, working memory, long-term mem-

ory, procedural memory, declarative memory (semantic and episodic) and the serial-position effect.

Review: Next, go back and read this section again.

Now take this Quick Quiz:

1. The __ holds images for a fraction of a second.


2. For most people, the abbreviation USA consists of __ informational chunk(s).


3. Suppose you must memorize a long list of words that includes desk, pig, gold, dog, chair,
   silver, table, rooster, bed, copper, and horse. If you can recall the words in any order you wish,
   how are you likely to group these items in recall? Why?


4. When you roller-blade, are you relying on procedural, semantic, or episodic memory?
   How about when you recall the months of the year? Or when you remember falling while roller-
   blading on an icy January day?


5. If a child is trying to memorize the alphabet, which sequence should present the greatest
   difficulty: abcdefg, klmnopq, or tuvwxyz? Why?
   Answers:

Study and Review at MyPsychLab

Desk, chair, table, and bed will probably form one cluster; pig, dog, rooster, and horse a second; 3. one2. sensory register1.

and gold, silver, and copper a third. Concepts tend to be organized in long-term memory in terms of semantic categories, such

klmnopq, because of the serial-position effect.5. procedural; semantic; episodic4. as furniture, animals, and metals.