How frequency affects recency judgments: A model for recency discrimination.

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Abstract
Previous evidence that repetition of an item in a list enhances that item's recency relative to other items has been interpreted as favoring a memory strength theory of recency discrimination. However, serious doubt has been cast upon the validity of the strength theory by experiments such as that of D. L. Hintzman and R. A. Block (see record) which instead favor a multirace representation for repetitions of an item. The present 2 experiments, with a total of 80 16-31 yr old Ss, tested 2 plausible interpretations of the effect of frequency on relative recency judgments. The 1st, that low frequencies result in poor recognition memory, hence poorer recency discrimination, was discounted in Exp I, which still found sizable frequency effects on relative recency judgments even when considering only recognized items. A multiple-trace theory of contextual time tagging was then proposed to account for the effects of event frequency on subjective recency. Exp II, which collected event frequency as well as relative recency judgments, yielded data which were fit quantitatively by the multiple-trace time tagging theory. It was found that relative "distance" judgments were not psychologically symmetric to relative recency judgments-a result not predicted by the time tagging model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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