Rehearsing what you'll say next makes you forget what everyone just said

In a classic experiment, people sitting in a circle took turns reading words aloud, then tried to recall what everyone else had read. Each person remembered their own neighbours' words worst, especially the person who'd spoken right before their own turn — attention spent rehearsing your own upcoming line crowds out whatever is being said around you.

— Charles F. Bond Jr., Linda Brockway, The Next-in-Line Effect — Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1988 (effect first described 1969)

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