Effects of Between-Item, Within-Item, and Autobiographical Elaborations on Incidental Free Recall

Abstract

Effects of types of elaboration on incidental free recall were investigated. The subjects performed an orienting task involving three rating conditions followed by an unexpected free recall test. Three rating conditions were designed to force between-item elaboration, within-item elaboration, and autobiographical elaboration. Between-item elaboration led to better recall than autobiographical elaboration, which in turn led to better recall than within-item elaboration. The above result was discussed in terms of both generative and discriminative processes in retrieval.