The long-term recency effect in recognition memory

Abstract

Three classes of theories explain the recency effect: the modal model, single-store models, and the composite view, which integrates the two positions. None could explain the absence of a long-term recency effect in recognition memory in previous studies. We suggest that prior work did not obtain a recency effect because testing used a multiple-probe rather than a single-probe recognition procedure. Here we tested memory using a single-probe recognition procedure. Experimental conditions included an immediate test, a delayed test after a filled interval, and a continuous-distractor paradigm in which the same filled delay preceded the first word and followed every study word. The long-term recency effect in continuous-distractor recognition was equivalent to the recency effect in immediate recognition. Its absence in the delayed recognition condition demonstrated that it was not attributed to the use of a putative short-term memory store. Single-store models and the composite view can account for this novel finding.1 1The study was funded by an NSERC grant CFC 205055 Fund 454119 to Morris Moscovitch and by the Israel Science Foundation Grant 894-01 to Yonatan Goshen-Gottstein. The authors thank Morris Moscovitch for his support, J. B. Caplan and F. I. M. Craik for their encouragement, helpful discussions, and comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and M. Ziegler for help in programming.