Primacy and recency during spatial-cueing

The order in which we receive information influences judgments such as impression formation. We investigated order effects at more primary level, with a spatial cueing paradigm. Two central arrows predicted, with the same validity (75%), where a target would appear. In double cue blocks more weight was given to the second arrow, as indicated by faster (M = 17.04 ms, p = .0034) responses by the participants (N = 31), when only the second cue was valid, as compared to when only the first cue was valid. This recency effect signals a deviation from the optimal strategy of assigning the same weight to the equally reliable cues, and suggests that the most recent cue was erroneously deemed to be more up to date. A second result was that, in blocks where the target could be preceded by either one or two cues there was an increase in the weight given to the first cue, as compared to the double cue block, indicating a shift towards primacy (M = 14.05 ms, p = .0098). This suggests that the response strategy tries to balance speed and accuracy. Finally, participants with low need for cognition scores showed stronger recency effects than their high need for cognition counterparts (r(30) = -.52, p = .0048). The former may process information more superficially, and resort to the most accessible cue, which could be the most recent one. More generally, the relationship between a basic task and higher-order tests suggests that primary paradigms may help understand more elaborate judgments.