Recency Effect - GCSE Psychology Definition

The recency effect is a psychological concept that refers to the tendency for people to remember the last things they have heard or seen in a list better than the things that came before. This happens because the most recent information is still fresh in our minds and hasn't had time to fade away. For example, if your teacher reads out a list of words and asks you to write down as many as you can remember, you're more likely to recall the words from the end of the list. The recency effect is an important part of understanding how our memory works, and it shows that the order of information can affect how well we remember it.