word length effect

The word length effect refers to the tendency for people to remember shorter words better than longer ones. This is because longer words take more time to pronounce and mentally rehearse, which can make it harder to hold them in short-term memory. Essentially, our working memory has a limited capacity, and longer words require more cognitive effort to process, leaving less available for retaining information. This phenomenon is often observed in memory experiments where individuals can recall lists of short words more accurately than lists of longer words.