# Measuring STM Capacity: Recency Measures

Psychologists have known for some time that people do not recall all information equally well. When people are presented with a large amount of information, they tend to have better recall of the information that came first and last. The information in the middle tends to be poorly remembered.

The fact that people tend to have good recall of the last information they take in is called the recency effect. The recency effect happens because of the way memory is structured. Remember that all the information we take in is first held in STM before being transferred to LTM. If we ask someone to recall a long list of information, the last few bits will still be held in their STM. They will usually recall these bits first.

It follows that, if we give people a long list of words to recall, they should show better recall for the words at the end of the list. The number of words they can recall from the end of the list should also tell us how much information their STM can hold.

A person's recency measure is the number of words they can recall from the end of a long list.

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Basic level content | Start | Digit span measures of STM | Recency measures of STM | Test your learning
Intermediate level content |  | Research using digit span measures | Research using recency measures |
Advanced level content |  | Ecological validity and STM research | Sampling validity and STM research |