What cognitive phenomenon describes our tendency to remember the first and last items in a list best?

The cognitive phenomenon that describes our tendency to remember the first and last items in a list best is known as the serial position effect. This effect arises from the way our memory processes information in sequential order.

When we encounter a list of items, the ones at the beginning benefit from the primacy effect, making them more likely to be rehearsed and encoded into long-term memory. Conversely, the items at the end of the list are recalled better due to the recency effect, as they are still fresh in our short-term memory. The serial position effect encapsulates both of these phenomena, reflecting how our recall ability is influenced by the position of items within a sequence.

Other options like the primacy effect and the recency effect describe specific components of this broader phenomenon, while the chunking effect relates to how we group information for easier memorization, but does not directly address the positioning of items in a list. Thus, the serial position effect is the most accurate term to describe the full scope of what happens when we try to remember items from a list.