Form of internal and external structure as factors in free-recall and ordered recall of nonsense and meaningful words

Abstract

Groups of Ss learned four different lists of words by free-recall and then used the same words in an ordered recall learning task. The lists were so constructed as to represent the four combinations of two levels of association values and (a) two forms of internal structure for free-recall, and (b) two forms of external structure for ordered recall. The results indicated that forms of internal and external structure and not association values were critical when these were the forms hypothesized by Garner (1962) as favorable for each of the two learning tasks. Otherwise in both learning situations, the high meaningful material was learned in fewer trials.