Recency Effect

Recent research has demonstrated that, when instructed to prioritize a serial position in visual working memory, adults are able to boost performance for this selected item, at a cost to non-prioritized items (e.g. Hu et al., 2014). While executive control appears to play an important role in this ability, the increased likelihood of recalling the most recently presented item (i.e. the recency effect) is relatively automatic, possibly driven by perceptual mechanisms. In three experiments 7 to 10-year-old’s ability to prioritize items in working memory was investigated using a sequential visual task (total N = 208). The relationship between individual differences in working memory and performance on the experimental task was also explored. Participants were unable to prioritize the first (Experiments 1 & 2) or final (Experiment 3) item in a 3-item sequence, while large recency effects for the final item were consistently observed across all experiments. The absence of a priority boost across three experiments indicates that children may not have the necessary executive resources to prioritize an item within a visual sequence, when directed to do so. In contrast, the consistent recency boosts for the final item indicate that children show automatic memory benefits for the most recently encountered stimulus. Finally, for the baseline condition in which children were instructed to remember all three items equally, additional working memory measures predicted performance at the first and second but not the third serial position, further supporting the proposed automaticity of the recency effect in visual working memory.

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Counterfactual Thinking and Recency Effects in Causal Judgment

10.31219/osf.io/vgbkx ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Paul Henne ◽

Aleksandra Kulesza ◽

Karla Perez ◽

Augustana Houcek

Keyword(s):

Causal Structure ◽

Counterfactual Thinking ◽

Recency Effect ◽

Causal Modeling ◽

Primacy Effect ◽

Causal Judgment ◽

Extended Model ◽

Recent Event ◽

Basketball Game ◽

Counterfactual Model

People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket, rather than the first, caused the team to win the basketball game. This recency effect, however, reverses in cases of overdetermination: people judge that earlier events, rather than more recent ones, caused the outcome when the event is individually sufficient but not individually necessary for the outcome. In five experiments (N = 5507), we find evidence for the recency effect and the primacy effect for causal judgment. Traditionally, these effects have been a problem for counterfactual views of causal judgment. However, an extension of a recent counterfactual model of causal judgment explains both the recency and the primacy effect. In line with the predictions of the extended counterfactual model, we also find that, regardless of causal structure, people tend to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event rather than to the earlier one (Experiment 2). Moreover, manipulating this tendency affects causal judgments in the ways predicted by this extended model: asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the earlier event weakens (and sometimes eliminates) the interaction between recency and causal structure, and asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event strengthens the interaction between recency and causal structure (Experiments 3 & 5). We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking and causal modeling.

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Memory for Pictures and Words, and the Negative Recency Effect

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.1978.47.3.967 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 967-970 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

John T. E. Richardson

Keyword(s):

Mental Imagery ◽

Visual Presentation ◽

Recency Effect ◽

Negative Recency ◽

Negative Recency Effect ◽

Pictures And Words

This experiment investigated performance in a final, cumulative test of a subject's ability to recall a series of lists. No negative recency effect was found with either pictures of objects or their names. This supports the suggestion of earlier research that the negative recency effect stems from failure to employ mental imagery as a mnemonic code on terminal serial positions and that visual presentation promotes the use of imagery throughout a list.

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Recency Effects in Opinion Formation

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1968.23.1.195 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 195-200 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Stanley Zdep ◽

Warner Wilson

Keyword(s):

Order Effect ◽

Recency Effect ◽

Jury Trial ◽

Opinion Formation ◽

Recency Effects ◽

Jury Trials

160 undergraduates read excerpts from a jury trial in either a defense-prosecution or a prosecution-defense order. A significant recency effect appeared on both opinion ( p < .05) and retention ( p < .01) measures. An attempt to manipulate the order effect, by interpolating materials from another jury trial, either between the parts of the first trial or after the first trial and the opinion rating, proved unsuccessful, possibly because the interpolated materials were not of sufficient length to allow for significant forgetting This study agrees with several others in showing mostly recency effects in decisions concerning jury trials.

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The influence of narrative disclosure readability, information ordering and graphical representations on non-professional investors' judgment: evidence from an emerging market

Journal of Applied Accounting Research ◽

10.1108/jaar-06-2020-0115 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Dalia Hussein El-Sayed ◽

Eman Adel ◽

Omar Elmougy ◽

Nadeen Fawzy ◽

Nada Hatem ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Impression Management ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Emerging Market ◽

Recency Effect ◽

Graphical Representations ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Content Type ◽

Future Performance ◽

Information Order

PurposeThis study examines whether manipulation in attributes of corporate narrative disclosures and the use of graphical representations can bias non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance, in an emerging market context.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct three different experiments with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, using accounting and finance senior undergraduate students to proxy for the non-professional investors.FindingsResults show that simple (more readable) disclosures improve non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance. In addition, it is found that non-professional investors are prone to a recency effect from the intentional ordering of narrative information, when using complex (less readable) narratives. However, no primacy effect is found, when using simple (more readable) disclosures. The results further provide evidence that the inclusion of graphical representations, along with the manipulated narrative disclosures, can moderate the recency effect of information order, when using less readable and complex narrative disclosures.Research limitations/implicationsThe results reveal that although the content of corporate disclosures can be objective, neutral and relevant, manipulation in textual features and the use of graphical presentations, can interact to impact how non-professional investors perceive and process the disclosed information. This study provides an Egyptian evidence regarding this issue, as the majority of prior studies concentrate on developed capital markets. In addition, it contributes to prior studies evaluating the appropriateness of the Belief Adjustment Model predictions about the effect of textual presentation order on decision-making, by providing evidence from an emerging market.Practical implicationsResults attempt to increase the awareness of investors and encourage them to use multiple sources of information to avoid the probable bias that can result from management's manipulation of narratives. In addition, the study could be of interest to regulators and standard-setters, where the results reveal the need for guidelines and regulations to guide the disclosure of narrative information and the use of graphical information in corporate reports.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of two impression management strategies in narrative disclosures (readability and information order), along with the use of graphical representations, on non-professional investors' judgment in an emerging market, like Egypt.

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