the serial position effect is a psychological phenomenon. it say that people are more likely to remember the first and last items on a list. they are less likely to remember the middle items. the term was created in 1913 by herman ebbinghaus. he was a german psychologist who was interested in testing his ability to remember items on a list. this ability is called free-recall. ebbinghaus performed free-recall experiments on himself. he used a list of 2000 syllables. the experiments showed him that the where the it was on the list affected how well he could remember it. this information is shown in the "serial position curve". the serial position curve shows two things. the first thing it showed him was that the first 2-3 items on the list and up to the last 8 items in a list are always remembered better than items in the middle. this was true in any list with 20 or more items. it also showed him that the size of the list and the speed at which it was preseted did not affect the outcome.