Many thanks to those of you who participated in the Psychology A level students’ memory tests to investigate the primacy and recency effects.
After creating their own ethical consent and debriefing forms, standardised materials and instructions, and collecting and analysing the data, the class can now reveal their results…
The sample tested did indeed confirm that on average, the first and last words in a (rather long) list are remembered better.
After statistical testing, our Psychology students found this result was less than 1% likely to be due to chance – so perhaps making a particularly good first and last impression in your presentations or essays could influence a busy examiner after all!
