Individual differences in stored digram frequencies and the immediate serial recall of letter and number strings

Abstract

This study examined the immediate serial recall of letter and number strings as a joint function of (a) the single-letter and sequential digram frequencies of the letter strings and (b) individual differences in the degree to which Ss already have in “store” information concerning the relative frequency of digrams as they occur in the language. The results clearly showed that high digram storage Ss show superior recall to low digram storage Ss for letter strings that vary both with respect to their single-letter frequencies and sequential digram frequencies, but that no differences in recall occur between the high and low digram storage Ss for the number strings.