Primacy and Recency Effects describe:

• A. The tendency to remember beginnings and endings better than the middle
• B. The tendency to overestimate rare events
• C. The tendency to assume vivid events are common
• D. The tendency to ignore base rates

Answer: (A)

Primacy and recency effects describe how people tend to remember the first and last items in a sequence better than those in the middle. The primacy part comes from more time to rehearse early items and transfer them into long-term memory, while the recency part comes from the most recent items still being held in short-term memory at the moment of recall. This serial position effect explains why beginnings and endings tend to stand out in memory. The other choices describe biases in judgment, not memory for a list—overestimating rare events, assuming vivid events are common, or ignoring base rates.