ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the recency effect reflects the application of an explicit retrieval strategy to the residue of implicit learning within a range of cognitive systems. The various criteria for implicit learning described by Tulving and Schacter are successfully applied to the recency effect, and a retrieval process is outlined that can account for both long- and short-term recency effects. The chapter suggests that a framework combining recency, priming, and implicit learning provides a basis for understanding one of the most important features of cognition and memory, namely, that of maintaining orientation in time and place. It describes work that suggests that a simple temporal or ordinal discrimination hypothesis fits the data from both long- and short term recency extremely well. The chapter explains an attempt to rehabilitate recency by arguing that it reflects registration in implicit memory by means of a process of priming.
