Next-in-Line Effect

Psychologist Malcolm Brenner first studied the effect experimentally in 1973, published in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. In his experiment, participants took turns reading words aloud from index cards, then attempted recall after 25 words. Results showed poor recall for information immediately preceding each person's turn. The effect stems from an encoding deficit: anticipation of performing distracts attention, preventing information from reaching long-term memory, making later retrieval impossible.