Next-in-line effect

Biological Parallel

Birds waiting to access a food source focus attention on timing their approach, not observing others—when your turn approaches, attention shifts from encoding to action preparation. Hummingbirds at crowded feeders monitor dominant bird departure timing while ignoring the feeding techniques of earlier visitors—attention narrows to launch-window calculation rather than social learning. Meerkats queuing for sentry duty shifts track when the current guard will rotate off, allocating cognitive resources to positioning for the takeover rather than encoding what threats the current sentry spotted. Baboons waiting to access a water source during dominance-ordered drinking prioritize timing their approach to avoid aggression, not memorizing which individuals drank before them. This is adaptive priority switching: monitoring when to act matters more than processing what others are doing. The next-in-line effect explains why you don't remember what the person before you said—your brain correctly allocated resources to performing, not encoding.