ABSTRACT
In episodic memory, primacy refers to superior performance (greater accuracy, shorter latency) on items at the beginning of the list, whereas recency refers to superior performance on items at the end of the list. These effects also show up in studies of discourse processing (Kintsch, 1974). Presumably they are telling us something important about human memory, and they should be of interest to those studying both discourse processing and episodic memory.
