Chris forgot about his quiz,so he had only 5 minutes to learn 20 vocabulary words.He went through the list once,waited a minute and then went through the list again in the same order.Although he was confident,his grade indicated that he missed approximately half of the words.Which words on the list did he most likely miss,and why?
A)According to the primacy effect,he would have missed the first few words on the list.
B)According to the recency effect,he would have missed the last few words on the list.
C)According to the serial position effect,most of the items he missed were probably in the middle of the list.
D)According to the primacy effect,he would have missed the middle words on the list.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The serial position effect states that items in the middle of a list are often the most difficult to remember because they were neither presented first (primacy effect) nor presented last (recency effect). Since Chris only had five minutes to study, he likely did not have enough time to fully encode all 20 words into his memory, resulting in him struggling to recall the words in the middle of the list. Therefore, it is most likely that the words he missed were in the middle of the list.

Chris Forgot About His Quiz,so He Had Only 5 Minutes