Free recall of trigrams following their presentation in a short-term memory task

Abstract

Ss free recalled items they had previously separately verbally recalled in a standard short-term memory task. Free recall was examined as a function of: (1) order of item presentation, (2) length of retention interval, (3) presence or absence of an instructional set to recall all items, and (4) activity during the intertrial interval. Significant effects due to order of item presentation, intertrial-interval activity, and interactions between order of presentation and intertrial-interval activity and between presentation order and instructions were found. A recency effect appeared in all instances, but a primacy effect was obtained only when Ss were forewarned of free recall. The effect of intertrial-interval activity was most evident with the last item. Rehearsal of the item produced better recall than either counting or doing nothing, but counting produced better recall than doing nothing.