Asudden, loud noise often has the impact of distracting participants long enough to clear the contents of working memory. imagine that participants hear a list of the names of 20 different fruits, followed by an unexpected loud noise. the effect of the noise will be

The result of the noise will be a diminished recency effect but no impact on how well the other words in the list are recalled. The recency effect is the occurrence that when people are questioned to remembrance in any sequence the items on a list, those that come at the end of the list are more probable to be remembered than the others.