The Serial Position Effect is a psychological observation stating that a person’s ability to recall items in a sequence depends heavily on their position. Specifically, humans are statistically most likely to remember the first items—driven by the primacy effect—and the last items—driven by the recency effect—in a list. This creates a phenomenon often referred to as the sandwich phenomenon, where the “filling” or middle section of a sequence is frequently lost to the perception gap. In technical communication, this creates a structural vulnerability: if your most vital technical advantage is buried in the middle of a 40-slide presentation, it effectively ceases to exist.
The FRAKT Perspective: The Behavioural Reality The absurdity is that most manufacturers treat a presentation like a linear novel, saving the “grand finale” for the end. Meanwhile, the architect’s brain has already entered energy-saving mode by slide twelve. We assume that because we spoke for sixty minutes, the audience heard sixty minutes of value. In reality, they experienced a strong opening via the primacy effect, a vague hum of technical nouns in the middle, and a polite closing reinforced by the recency effect.
This is not a failure of the architect’s intellect; it is an irrational but predictable quirk of human biology. This sandwich phenomenon ensures we prioritise the beginning to set the context and the end to form a final judgement. Everything else is just cognitive load fighting for survival in the “retention trough.”
Practical Application & Case Study
- The Problem: A ventilation manufacturer places their unique, patented heat-recovery efficiency data—the very thing that wins the specification—at the 30-minute mark of a one-hour CPD.
- The Result: By the Q&A session, the architects are asking questions about the very data they were just shown. The information suffered a context shift into oblivion because it was positioned in the memory “dead zone,” neglected by both the primacy and recency effects.
- The FRAKT Intervention: We re-architect the choice architecture of the presentation using a “Front-and-Back” loading strategy to exploit the sandwich phenomenon.
- Phase 1 (Primacy): We lead with the heat-recovery patent as the “Hero Insight” within the first five minutes. This exploits signalling to establish authority immediately.
- Phase 2 (Recency): We repeat the core performance metric in the final summary, framing it as the solution to a future regulatory risk, ensuring the recency effect takes hold.
- Phase 3 (The Middle): We fill the “sagging middle” with low-friction, illustrative case studies that require less intense mental processing.
- The Outcome: The “sticky” information is placed where the brain is most receptive. The manufacturer stops fighting biology and starts using it as behavioural leverage.
“If you’re burying your best technical feature in the middle of your deck, you’re basically whispering it in a crowded pub. Put your strongest punch in the first two minutes to trigger the primacy effect, or don’t be surprised when the architect remembers your tie better than your U-values.”
