The tendency to recall the first and last items in a list better than the middle items is known as:

How do you order list items?

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Serial Position Effect- A UX Perspective
It’s History Time
Primacy effect:
Recency effect:
UX Perspective
Some of the best tips identified with existing platforms:
Key takeaways and tl;dr
What is it called when you recall the first and last items on a list better than the middle of the list?
What's the primacy effect?
Is the tendency to recall more accurately the first and last items in a series?
What is the difference between primacy and recency effect?

Present important items at the beginning and end of a list to maximize recall and the likelihood that users will remember those items when the time comes to make a decision. Initial items are remembered more efficiently than items later in a list. Items at the end of a list are recalled more easily immediately after their presentation.

Concretely, you will want to:

Present important items at the beginning and at the end of a list to maximize recall – the probability that people will remember those items.
If you want people to choose one item over another, present it in the end of a list if the decision is to be made immediately after its presentation. We tend to favor the last candidate presented to us.
If the decision is to be made at a later time, present your preferred item at the beginning of the list.
Focus on only showing information relevant to the current task in your user interface to minimize the load you put on your users’ cognitive capacity. Provide tools to guide your user toward their goals, helping them be more efficient and more accurate in their tasks.
Add cues to things previously encountered in order to inititate recognition of the action and recall its meaning. Cues are most often graphical, but can also include sounds.
Limit the amount of recall required to retain relevant information to complete a task or simply to retrieve information. Human attention is limited and we are only capable of maintaining up to around five items in our short-term memory.

When recalling items from a list, items at the beginning and the end are better recalled than the items in the middle.

Our ability to better recall items at the beginning of a list is called the primacy effect, whereas our ability to recall items at the end of a list is called a recency effect.

Primacy effect: Initial items on a list are stored in long-term memory more efficiently than items later in the list. The longer the time items are presented, the stronger the primacy effect is, as people then have more time to store the initial items in long-term memory.
Recency effect: The last few items are still in working memory and are readily available. The strength of the recency effect is unaffected by the rate of presentation, but is greatly affected by the passage of time and presentation of additional information. The recency effect further disappears when people think about other matters for thirty seconds after the last item in the list is presented.

Presenting long lists of information to users, significantly strains our limited resources and restricted memory systems – especially short-term memory, where only three or four items or chunks of information can be maintained at one time. Our ability to recall previously presented items is also severely impacted by events between initial processing and later recall.

Serial Position Effect- A UX Perspective

List of items for a Quick Memory test.

When you tell a bedtime fairy tale to a kid, where do you start and end? Most of it goes like, “Once upon a time…And they lived happily ever after” and we make up the stuff in between. Did you ever find yourself pick up a candy bar or chewing gum in your cart while waiting on the checkout lane in a supermarket without any apparent intention of purchasing that? Either case, you’ve experienced serial position effect in your everyday life.

Shall we demonstrate this effect in practice? Take a good look at the image of the list provided above. And we’ll get to it in a while…

It’s History Time

Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, performed studies on himself finds that recall accuracy typically varies as a function of an item’s position. People tend to recall items found at the end of the list and the beginning frequently than the middle of the list.

Serial-position Effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and middle items worst.

The idea was demonstrated with a list of items to be remembered and recalled after some time with interference tasks. This overall effect is a result of two separate effects:

Memory recall by position in the list — Wikipedia

Primacy effect:

This refers to the tendency to recall information presented at the start of a list better than information at the end or middle. The main cause of this is that people tend to rehearse a lot at the beginning to remember them. A simple example would be exploring new topics either during their studies or any hobbies. People would spend as much time to strengthen their base ideas before moving towards any intermediate or expert topics. soon, they might lose interest but would remember their initial efforts. This also relates to a famous saying, “The first impression is the last impression”.

Recency effect:

This refers to the tendency to recall information presented at the end of a list better than information at the middle or beginning. The recency effect depends on short-term memory, also known as active or primary memory, which can hold a relatively small amount of information in the mind for a brief period. You might be able to recall what you had for dinner last night, but it might take a while or completely forget what you had a couple of days or a week ago.

While the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” may be true, the illustrations on the front and the summary on the back cover provides an impression leading to read that book.

Read more on the psychological theory here:

UX Perspective

Keep in mind that users have a limited span of active memory when they visit your website or application. Would it help or stress them to be provided with an extensive list of features you might provide? A designer’s job is to make a user’s experience as stressless as possible when they come across your platform. For example, think of a product’s landing page, where users are presented with in-depth, system-level information at the top and bottom of the page while the call-to-action for purchase of that product was presented in the middle of that page. There’s a good chance, your user is already on the competitor’s product on the next tab of their browser by now.

Some of the best tips identified with existing platforms:

Apple landing page featuring iPhone 11 Pro

Important information relevant to the user’s decision should be kept at the beginning and bottom of your landing page. The primacy effect will make an immediate impact on the user providing your product’s highlighted features at the beginning of the page. The recency effect can help them make an informed decision to make that purchase at the end of your page and you can mention all the detailed information in the middle of your page. For example, check out the landing page for iPhone 11 pro. The first scroll will focus mainly on the new camera modules and features as nowadays users primarily make their purchase decisions based on the smartphone’s camera performances as the rest of the features will remain the same across all devices. Also, at the end of that page, you will find the links to the upgrade and trade-in options that can help users save some money over their upgrades. Most of the time, these factors will be the major factors that will eventually lead to a sale for them.

Microsoft Word display required tools in use

Show relevant information for the tasks that the user is currently focussed on to eliminate the excessive cognitive load on users. The information that might not be relevant to the user’s task can be hidden under a list on the taskbar or minimized for access if required. Implementation of this technique can be observed at many applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Microsoft word, etc. Let’s consider Microsoft word for the example here. When the user opens up a new document, the user is provided with an active “Home” tab. This tab has essential features at hand for the user, required for a simple text document such as font styles, paragraph styling, and spacing requirements. Utilizing the recency effect, the user will not struggle to find the absolute necessary tools for formatting the document compared to all the tools provided at once, which could confuse the users and provide less space for the user to work with or everything hidden from the user, which would take extra cognition load to figure out where the tools reside. Also, you can notice page numbers and page zoom size at the footer of the interface for immediate information.

Instant messages serial position — Noon

Provide visual or auditory cues for the things encountered before by the user. The best example of this would be instant messaging applications. Notifications for new messages received by any application are displayed on the top of previously received or read messages on the list. Also, new messages are differentiated by the highlights to indicate they are not yet read. In case, user missed the older notifications and are buried at the bottom of the list, certain cues like the count badge can hint the user to check for unread messages within the list. This takes advantage of the recency effect. Users are most likely to forget the messages received earlier in the list rather than the ones in their visual vicinity, on the top of the list.

Amazon website display all selected filters

Limit the user’s recall memory for the items about related information of the task performed. Considering another important psychological effect, Miller’s law, human attention is limited and can maintain only about five (plus or minus two) items of information at any time. For example, searching for a laptop on the Amazon website, you get overwhelmed by the displayed products. It’s natural for any user to filter their choice depending on the specifications, brand name, price, etc. Users typically tend to forget their current selected filters after browsing through multiple items provided in the catalog. Therefore, filters listed on the top of their catalog gives them a quick reference to identify what they should expect or change the filters if necessary.

Read more about the serial position effect and tips for incorporating in your design here:

Key takeaways and tl;dr

Do you remember the sequence provided above? Write the sequence of the icons without the color below in the comment section without looking at the sequence again to check how your memory served you.

Primacy effect can help potential users with the initial impression of your product’s features in a brief while the recency effect can help those users convert as your customers. Design your product in a way that puts a minimum load on your user’s cognition by providing immediate access to relevant tools for the task performed. Whether you want to leave a positive lasting impression using the primacy effect or awe them with all your product has to offer with the recency effect, use the Serial Position effect in your product’s design and enjoy the rest of your day. 🙂

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published in our platform. This story contributed to UX Para Minas Pretas (UX For Black Women), a Brazilian organization focused on promoting equity of Black women in the tech industry through initiatives of action, empowerment, and knowledge sharing. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.

What is it called when you recall the first and last items on a list better than the middle of the list?

The serial position effect is the psychological tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle. The serial position effect is a form of cognitive bias, and it includes both the primacy effect and the recency effect.

What's the primacy effect?

The primacy effect is the tendency for individuals without neurological impairment to show enhanced memory for items presented at the beginning of a list relative to items presented in the middle of the list.

Is the tendency to recall more accurately the first and last items in a series?

The recency effect is the tendency to remember the most recently presented information best. For example, if you are trying to memorize a list of items, the recency effect means you are more likely to recall the items from the list that you studied last.

What is the difference between primacy and recency effect?

The Primacy/Recency Effect is the observation that information presented at the beginning (Primacy) and end (Recency) of a learning episode tends to be retained better than information presented in the middle. Dr.