Individual differences in memory organization as related to word‐association, object‐sorting, and word‐matching styles

Abstract

The aims of the study were to examine the possibility of consistent individual differences in styles of clustering in free recall, and to relate these differences to styles of organization reflected in other tasks. Fifty‐seven subjects were presented with seven repetitions of a list of 33 words which could be grouped into 11 conceptual categories or, alternatively, into 11 associative categories of three words each. Subjects were found to converge consistently upon one or the other mode of organization with successive presentations of the list. Number of words recalled was more strongly related to associative than to conceptual clustering. Individual differences in amount and style of clustering yielded complex relationships with variables derived from object‐sorting, word‐association, and word‐matching tasks. The implications of the results to the idea of different modes of organizing events were discussed.