An instructor gives her students a list of terms to memorize for their biology exam and immediately asks one student to recite the terms back to her. Which terms will this student most likely recall from the list?

Question

Social Studies

Devin Grant

6 May, 17:15

An instructor gives her students a list of terms to memorize for their biology exam and immediately asks one student to recite the terms back to her. Which terms will this student most likely recall from the list?

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Answers (1)

Know the Answer?

Haylie Liu · Answer 1

The answer is the items at the end of the list.

Explanation:

The student in the example is more likely to remember the items at the end of the list, due to a phenomenon called the recency effect: we will remember best the most recent information. At the same time, this is related to the serial-position effect, which states that the order of the items in a list influences the way we remember them. More specifically, we remember items at the end and the beginning more easily.