Doubts concerning primacy in rats' nonspatial recognition memory: Reply to Gaffan and Gaffan (1992).

E. A. Gaffan and D. Gaffan (see record 1992-37974-001) drew attention to an alarming lack of variability in a previous report (P. Reed et al; see record 1991-11847-001) of primacy and recency in recognition memory for nonspatial lists in rats. Their analysis, and the doubts raised by it, are accepted in the present article. Further analysis of the original data suggests that the low variability in the Reed et al data may have stemmed partly from experimenter effects. Equivalent analyses of other experiments conducted using the same apparatus and the same kinds of stimuli showed variances in line with a priori expectation. A new experiment modeled on the original one (but differing in some respects) showed recency but no primacy. It is concluded that the previous report of Reed et al should, for the present, be regarded as potentially flawed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)