Primacy effects in nonspatial recognition memory in rats

The existence of primacy and recency effects in nonspatial recognition memo ry in rats was investigated using a nonmatching-to-sample task (namely, vis ual discrimination in a Y-maze). Although previous research has demonstrate d recency effects in nonspatial tasks, evidence for a primacy effect in suc h tasks is equivocal. The current study evaluated nonspatial memory under c onditions that have been found to optimize primacy effects. Significant pri macy effects were found over all trials and also for the last six trials. R esults are discussed in terms of identification of the optimal conditions f or producing and detecting serial position effects in memory. (C) 2000 Acad emic Press.