Effects of Difficulty Variables and Type of Suffix on Serial Recall

Abstract

Two experiments compared the effects of suffixes on the forward and backward recall of sequences consisting of alphabetic characters. Sequences varied in confusability in both studies and in length in Experiment 2. Results suggest that some aspects of the suffix effect may represent the serial position effects of changes in task difficulty. Additionally, results with three different types of suffixes are inconsistent with the view that acoustic differences per se between sequences and suffixes are determinants of the size of suffix effects.