Free recall as a function of meaningfulness, formal similarity, form and amount of internal structure, and locus of contingency

Abstract

The purpose of these experiments was to determine the effects of meaningfulness and various conditions and levels of formal similarity on free recall acquisition, and to identify processes involved in stimulus encoding under these treatments. Variations under conditions of high similarity included form (pairwise versus interaction contingency) and amount of internal structure, and locus of pairwise contingency. When stimulus sets were words, high similarity impaired recall, the extent of impairment depending upon the nature of the contingency. When stimuli were nonsense syllables, high similarity facilitated recall, with the exception that an interaction contingency significantly impaired acquisition. Both form and amount of structure affected performance to a greater extent under conditions of low than of high meaningfulness.