On the generality of some memory laws

Abstract

Several memory laws have been established for the free recall of word lists. The generality of some of these laws were tested, using tasks which the subjects performed (SPTs) as to‐be‐recalled list items. SPT recall obeyed one law of word recall in showing a strong positive recency effect in immediate free recall, which appeared to be due to these events being in a temporary state of high accessibility. Differences between word and SPT recall were: 1) The reliable primacy effect associated with word recall did not appear in SPT recall; 2) Subjects reported using active memorisation strategies for word lists, but not for SPT lists; 3) Unlike word recall, diverting the subject's attention to so‐called deep or shallow features of the SPTs during presentation did not affect the level of their recall. These results considered together with Cohen & Stewart's (1981) finding that SPT recall was not age‐sensitive were taken to indicate that SPTs should be regarded as a different class of memory event than words, and that memory models dealing with SPT recall should de‐emphasize the importance of encoding, stressing instead retention, and retrieval operations.