Hypermnesia and the organization of recall

Abstract

In this study, the role of organizational processes in hypermnesia was investigated. Subjects were given 40 simple riddles and asked to recall their answers on each of five consecutive recall trials. Two measures of organization, based on interitem response times during recall or on repetition of item pairings between successive recall trials, were used. The two measures yielded comparable findings. Total recall and organized recall increased across recall trials, but unorganized recall did not. The findings support the hypothesis that the construction of a relatively stable, interitem organizational scheme is important for the growth of recall. It was suggested that organizational processes may contribute to the maintenance of items once recalled rather than to their initial retrieval.