the recency effect is the ability to remember items near the end of a list. unlike the primacy effect, changes in speed and the size of the list do not affect the recency effect. psychologists have learned that asking people to list the items in the ‘order they were presented’ causes less recency effect. in a 1966 study, glanzer and kunitz learned that increasing the time between when the list is presented and when recall is tested can affect the recency effect. with just an added 30 second delay, there was no longer a recency effect. in 1990, researchers tried to distract the people during the test. they would have the person do something that stopped short-term memory (rehearsal). for example, they would have the person countbackward from 3. the results showed that this also removed the recency effect.