The serial position effect is a psychological phenomenon that suggests that people are more likely to remember the first and last items on a list, rather than the middle ones. The term was invented in 1913 by Herman Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who was interested in testing his ability to remember items on a list (). To do so he performed free-recall experiments on himself using a list of 2000 made-up syllables. He observed that how well he would remember an item depended on the item's position on the list and is reflected by the serial position curve. The serial position curve reflects two . The first 2-3 items and up to the last 8 items in a list are always better remembered than those in the middle (in lists with 20 or more items). These findings are not influenced by the size and presentation rate (how fast items were presented) of the list. They show a primacy and recency effect. 