Position distinctiveness, item familiarity, and presentation frequency affect reconstruction of order in immediate episodic memory

Three experiments examined the effects of position distinctiveness, item familiarity, and frequency of presentation on serial position functions in a task involving reconstructing the order of a subset of 12 names in a list of 20 names. Three different serial position conditions were compared in which the subset of names occurred in Positions 1–12, 5–16, or 9–20, with all subsets including Positions 9–12. The serial positions were defined temporally in Experiments 1 and 2 and spatially in Experiment 3. The serial position functions in all three experiments were well predicted by Murdock’s [Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1960). The distinctiveness of stimuli. Psychological Review, 67, 16–31] account in terms of the distinctiveness of the absolute positions. Experiment 3 also revealed significant effects of item familiarity and frequency of presentation on order reconstruction.