# Glanzer & Cunitz (1966)

Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) carried out an experiment very similar to the one you have tried. Participants (PPs) heard a series of 15 words (one per second). At the end of the word lists, they were told to recall as many as possible, in whichever order they liked.

Glanzer & Cunitz found better recall at the beginning and end of the list. The words at the beginning had been transferred to LTM, whilst the words at the end were recalled from STM. The words in the middle were lost from memory.

In a second experiment, Glanzer & Cunitz used the same method: PPs were presented with words at the rate of one per second. However, before being asked to recall the words, PPs were given an interference task. They were asked to spend 30 seconds counting backwards in threes from 100. This is a task that requires the use of STM.

The interference task made a high demand on the PPs' STM. As a result of doing the interference task, the recency effect disappeared, although the primacy effect was not affected. This adds weight to the view that recency effects are due to STM, and that therefore recency measures are a good measure of STM capacity.

This experiment shows that the recency effect is definitely related to STM capacity.

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