Recency judgments as a function of word frequency: A framing effect and frequency misattributions

The effects of word frequency on judgments of recency of item presentation were examined in two experiments. Subjects in Experiment 1 were presented two mixed lists of high- and low-frequency words followed by a list assignment task for recognized items. It was found that subjects were biased toward assigning low-frequency words to the more recently presented list. Subjects in Experiment 2 were presented a single mixed list of high- and low-frequency words followed by either a relative recency of presentation judgment task or a relative primacy of presentation judgment task. Each word pair on the tests contained one high-frequency word and one low-frequency word. It was found that, for the recency judgment task, subjects were biased to select the low-frequency item as having been presented more recently. However, on the parallel primacy judgment task, there were no effects of word frequency; moreover, overall accuracy levels were higher with primacy than with recency instructions. We interpret the effects of word frequency on recency judgments in Experiments 1 and 2 in terms of a misattribution of frequency-related differences in recollection-based recognition. The finding that recency and primacy instructions produced different patterns of results provides further evidence (Flexser & Bower, 1974) for an effect on performance of the way in which the temporal judgment task was framed.