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 presenta tion were examined in two experiments. Subjects in Experiment 1 were p resented 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 mixe d List of high-and low-frequency words followed by either a relative r ecency of presentation judgment task or a relative primacy of presenta tion judgment task. Each word pair on the tests contained one high-fre quency word and one low-frequency word. It was found that, for the rec ency judgment task, subjects were biased to select the low-frequency i tem as having been presented more recently. However, on the parallel p rimacy judgment task, there were no effects of word frequency; moreove r, overall accuracy levels were higher with primacy than with recency instructions. We interpret the effects of word frequency on recency ju dgments in Experiments 1 and 2 in terms of a misattribution of frequen cy-related differences in recollection-based recognition. The finding that recency and primacy instructions produced different patterns of r esults provides further evidence (Flexser & Bower, 1974) for an effect on performance of the way in which the temporal judgment task was fra med.