Part-list cuing can impair, improve, or not influence recall performance: The critical roles of encoding and access to study context at test.

Abstract

The results of four experiments are reported, in which we examined how the effects of part-list cuing - the presentation of a random selection of studied items as retrieval cues at test - on recall of the remaining target items depend on encoding and access to study context at test. Encoding was varied by inducing high and low degrees of interitem associations; access to study context at test was varied by inducing high and low degrees of contextual overlap between study and test. Results showed that the effects of part-list cuing depend critically on encoding and study context access. Depending on the combination of the two, part-list cuing impaired, improved, or did not influence recall of the target items. A multimechanisms account of part-list cuing is provided to explain how part-list cuing affects target recall in the different experimental conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record