Negative recency effects in delayed recognition: Spacing, consolidation, and retrieval strategy processes

While items learned immediately before testing are generally remembered better than prior items in a study list, in delayed testing this relationship is reversed, yielding a negative recency effect. To adjudicate between the strategic rehearsal and spacing accounts of this phenomenon, we examined performance of 169 participants on a delayed recognition test following multiple sessions requiring the study and immediate free recall testing of 16 lists of 16 words. This revealed a strong effect of the amount of spacing between initial study position and initial free recall position on the degree of negative recency, supporting the spacing account. Furthermore, these spacing effects were nonmonotonic, suggesting that they are mediated by consolidation processes. Additional analyses indicate that strategies and rehearsal opportunities may also contribute to the effects of within-list encoding position on subsequent long-term memory, but for recall more than for recognition.