Position distinctiveness, item familiarity, and presentation frequency affect reconstruction of order in immediate episodic memory q Alice F. Healy a, * , Kathleen M. Shea a , James A. Kole a , Thomas F. Cunningham b a Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Muenzinger Building, 345 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, USA b Department of Psychology, St. Lawrence University, Flint Hall, Canton, NY 13617, USA Received 3 April 2007; revision received 19 June 2007 Available online 13 August 2007 Abstract 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 dis- tinctiveness of the absolute positions. Experiment 3 also revealed significant effects of item familiarity and frequency of presentation on order reconstruction. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Position distinctiveness; Item familiarity; Episodic memory; Order reconstruction; Immediate memory; Serial position function; Absolute and relative positions; Presentation frequency The aim of this study is to explore factors affecting performance on order reconstruction in immediate epi- sodic memory. One important factor considered is serial position. A bow-shaped serial position function, with advantages for both the initial (primacy) and final (recency) positions, has been found in numerous epi- sodic memory tasks, starting with Nipher’s (1878) report. This bowed function has been taken as evidence supporting the dual-storage modal model of memory (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966; James, 1890; Waugh & Norman, 1965), accord- ing to which the primacy effect reflects long-term (secondary) memory and the recency effect reflects short-term (primary) memory. An alternative account, initially provided by Murdock (1960), explains primacy and recency advantages in terms of the fact that the 0749-596X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.06.011 q This work was supported by Army Research Institute Contract DASW01-03-K-0002 and Army Research Office Grant W9112NF-05-1-0153 to the University of Colorado. We are indebted to Lyle Bourne and other members of the Center for Research on Training for helpful comments about this research and to Bob Greene and Roddy Roediger for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 303 492 8895. E-mail address: ahealy@psych.colorado.edu (A.F. Healy). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Memory and Language 58 (2008) 746–764 Journal of Memory and Language www.elsevier.com/locate/jml