Thapar A, Greene R L
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106.
Mem Cognit. 1993 May;21(3):329-37. doi: 10.3758/bf03208265.
When subjects perform a distractor task before and after every item on a list, recall of the last item is much higher than recall of items from the middle of the list. Koppenaal and Glanzer (1990) have shown that this long-term recency effect can be eliminated by using, after the last item, a distractor task different from that used elsewhere on the list. They interpreted this finding as evidence in favor of a short-term-store account of long-term recency effects. This account is challenged by the results reported here. Practice either on the task or on time-sharing between the task and list items had little impact on the recency effect. Also, substantial recency effects were found when a different distractor task occurred after every list position. Thus, it is not true that long-term recency effects are found only when subjects have an opportunity to adapt to the distractor task. Our results are not consistent with a short-term-store account of recency effects.
当受试者在列表中的每个项目前后执行干扰任务时，对最后一个项目的回忆远高于对列表中间项目的回忆。科佩纳尔和格兰泽（1990年）表明，通过在最后一个项目之后使用与列表中其他地方不同的干扰任务，可以消除这种长期近因效应。他们将这一发现解释为支持长期近因效应的短期存储解释的证据。本文报告的结果对这一解释提出了挑战。在任务上的练习或在任务与列表项目之间的分时练习对近因效应影响很小。此外，当在每个列表位置之后出现不同的干扰任务时，也发现了显著的近因效应。因此，认为只有当受试者有机会适应干扰任务时才会出现长期近因效应，这种说法是不正确的。我们的结果与近因效应的短期存储解释不一致。
