Cued recall performance of unrelated word pairs is reduced by the presence of A-B, A-C items in the same list

Abstract

Repeated pairs of words can inhibit the recall of singly presented word pairs. This intralist inhibition is observed in cued recall tasks in which one list (homogeneous) contains only singly presented word pairs and another list (mixed) contains single and repeated word pairs. Recall of singly presented word pairs is worse when there are repeated word pairs than when there are not. In the present study, instead of repeating a pair, only the stimulus term was repeated, resulting in an A-B, A-C condition. Again, recall for singly presented pairs is worse in the mixed in contrast to the homogeneous list. That is, recall for the A-B pairs is worse for lists with both A-B and A-B, A-C pairs than for lists with only A-B pairs. The data are interpreted to indicate that presumably independent items sharing no common cues do nevertheless share a common retrieval route insofar as they have a common context, namely, being members of the same list.