medium · MCAT psych-soc
A researcher finds that participants who memorize a list of words recall more items from the beginning and end of the list than from the middle. To isolate the contribution of long-term memory to the recall advantage, the researcher introduces a 30-second distractor task (counting backward) immediately after the last word is presented, before recall begins.
Compared with immediate free recall, what is the predicted effect of this manipulation?
- The primacy effect persists while the recency effect is selectively abolished, because rehearsal-based long-term encoding is unaffected but the recency items are displaced from short-term storage
- The recency effect persists while the primacy effect is selectively abolished, because the distractor task blocks rehearsal-based consolidation of early list items into long-term storage
- Both the primacy and recency effects are abolished, because the distractor task disrupts short-term maintenance and retrieval processes uniformly across every single serial position of the list
- Both effects are preserved but shifted earlier in the list, because the distractor task compresses the entire serial-position curve toward the primacy region during the full retention interval afterward
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