Three experiments examined the effects of position distinctiveness, item familiarity, and frequency of presentation on serial position functions in a task involving reconstructing the order of a subset of 12 names in a list of 20 names. Three different serial position conditions were compared in which the subset of names occurred in Positions 1-12, 5-16, or 9-20, with all subsets including Positions 9-12. The serial positions were defined temporally in Experiments 1 and 2 and spatially in Experiment 3. The serial position functions in all three experiments were well predicted by Murdock's [Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1960). The distinctiveness of stimuli. "Psychological Review," 67, 16-31] account in terms of the distinctiveness of the absolute positions. Experiment 3 also revealed significant effects of item familiarity and frequency of presentation on order reconstruction.