Which cognitive phenomenon describes the greater ability to recall the first item in a list?

• A. Primacy Effect
• B. Recency Effect
• C. Spreading Activation
• D. Interference

Answer: (A)

Primacy effect is the tendency to recall the first items in a list more than the middle items. This happens because those initial items get more rehearsal and time to be encoded into long-term memory, giving them a lasting footprint that makes them easier to retrieve later. The last items are remembered well too, but this is due to the recency effect, which relies on short-term memory. Spreading activation describes how activation spreads through related ideas in a network, not the order-based recall pattern, and interference refers to forgetting caused by competing information. So the described phenomenon is primacy effect.