the recency effect is normally said to be caused by short-term memory. (stm) the stm of a person can store a small amount of information for a short time. the amount of information is normally two to four items. the last few items of a list being normally still in the stm of a person when the items are being recalled. this theory explains why the recency effect is generally larger than the primacy effect. it takes more effort to get the first items from long-term memory (ltm) than to get the items from stm. this is affected by the stm of the person being affected by a distraction.