Effects of high-priority events on recall and recognition of other events

Abstract

High-priority events (HPEs) were names of famous people inserted in lists of common words. Significant decrements in recall of items immediately preceding HPEs at input were observed at the 1-sec rate but not at the 0.5-sec rate of presentation. Recognition data at both rates indicated significant detrimental effects on items immediately preceding and immediately following HPEs. Recognition effects were obtained both with and without prior free recall, and occurred even in the absence of HPE instructions. The results suggest that the items just before and just after an HPE both suffer losses of effective presentation time at input.