Serial Position Effect

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus first systematically investigated the effect in his seminal 1885 experiments on memory, conducted primarily on himself using lists of nonsense syllables to minimize prior associations. Published in Über das Gedächtnis (On Memory), Ebbinghaus described how people recall the first items (primacy effect) and last items (recency effect) in a list more frequently than middle items. The primacy effect occurs because early items receive more rehearsal and transfer to long-term memory, while the recency effect reflects short-term memory retention of recent information.