

Order Matters—But Not the Way You Think: How Serial Position Gets Misused
9 snips Aug 11, 2025
Explore how the order of information affects memory retention, focusing on the primacy and recency effects. Discover why we remember the first and last items better than those in the middle. Learn about the common pitfalls designers face when applying memory principles, and how to prioritize attention over mere recall. Get insights from pioneering psychologists and apply these findings to enhance your design, whether it’s a product pitch or content organization, ensuring your key messages resonate and stick.
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Memory Exercise With Number List
- Thomas Watkins reads a list of numbers and asks you to recall them afterward.
- Many people recall numbers at the beginning or end due to serial position effect.
Founders Illustrated Memory And Attention
- Thomas Watkins recounts Ebbinghaus's nonsense-syllable experiments that produced the forgetting curve.
- He contrasts this with William James's 'spotlight' metaphor for attention.
Primacy And Recency Have Different Causes
- Primacy happens because early items get more rehearsal and encoding time.
- Recency happens because last items remain in short-term memory and decay less.