A person assembling a tool one week after reading the instructions can remember the first and last steps of the procedure but not the middle ones. This best illustrates which of the following?

the serial position effect

Explanation:

The Serial-position effect is the propensity and likelihood of an individual to recall the first and last items in a series best, and that of the middle items worst. The term was introduced by Hermann Ebbinghaus through several studies he performed on himself, and submits to the study that recall accuracy differs as a function of an item's position within a study list.  

good question. i'll be looking into that. (this is a joke sir)

the earthquake in haiti was a magnitude of 7.0 according to the u.s geological survey yet the smaller earthquake in haiti killed more than 200,000 and left more than 1.2 million people homeless. the chile earthquake was a magnitude of 8.8 and 500 times more stronger but chile's earthquake only injured 712 people.