Long-term recency effects and phonological short-term memory. A neuropsychological case study.

Long-term recency effects were investigated in a left brain-damaged patient, PV, who had a pathologically low auditory-verbal span and a lack of the normal recency effects in immediate free recall of auditorily presented lists of words, attributed to the abnormally reduced capacity of the phonological short-term store component of memory (Vallar and Papagno, 1986). In a task requiring the delayed free recall of a list of anagram solutions the patient showed both a recall performance level and a long-term recency effect comparable to the control group. These findings dissociate long and short-term recency phenomena, which would reflect the operation of different memory components. A collateral finding was PV's difficulty in anagram solving, which may be traced back to the defective function of her phonological short-term store.