[4] One theorised reason for the recency effect is that these items are still present in working memory when recall is solicited.
Intervening tasks involve working memory, as the distractor activity, if exceeding 15 to 30 seconds in duration, can cancel out the recency effect.
[6] Additionally, if recall comes immediately after the test, the recency effect is consistent regardless of the length of the studied list,[4] or presentation rate.
Coluccia, Gamboz, and Brandimonte (2011) explain free recall as participants trying to remember information without any prompting.
In this way, earlier items were closer to the test period by way of rehearsal and could be partially explained by the recency effect.
In 2013, a study showed that primacy effect is also prominent in decision making based on experience in a repeated-choice paradigm, a learning process also known as operant conditioning.
The authors showed that importance attached to the value of the first reward on subsequent behaviour, a phenomenon they denoted as outcome primacy.
A major problem with this model, however, is that it cannot predict the long-term recency effect observed in delayed recall, when a distraction intervenes between each study item during the interstimulus interval (continuous distractor task).
Under delayed recall conditions, the test context would have drifted away with increasing retention interval, leading to attenuated recency effect.
As long as the recall process is competitive, recent items will win out, so a recency effect is observed.
Overall, an important empirical observation regarding the recency effect is that it is not the absolute duration of retention intervals (RI, the time between end of study and test period) or of inter-presentation intervals (IPI, the time between different study items) that matters.
The recency effect as well as the ratio changes in Alzheimer's disease and therefore can be used as an indicator of this disease condition from the earliest stages of neurodegeneration [23] In 1977, William Crano decided to outline a study to further the previous conclusions on the nature of order effects, in particular those of primacy vs. recency, which were said to be unambiguous and opposed in their predictions.
The specifics tested by Crano were: The continuity effect or lag-recency effect predicts that having made a successful recall, the next recalled item is less likely to come from a remote serial position, rather than a nearby serial position (Kahana, Howard, Zaromb & Wingfiend, 2002).