Probe versus free recall

Abstract

The nature of the probe recall technique was examined in three experiments by comparing probe recall and free recall performance with serial and PA word lists. Experiments I and II showed that: (a) free recall is superior to probe recall with serial input, (b) probe recall is slightly better than free recall with PA lists, (c) performance on PA lists is better than performance on serial lists with probe recall, (d) there is no difference between list types with free recall, and (e) output interference is equally apparent with serial and PA lists. Experiment III showed that the additional requirement of recall of serial order information in free recall reverses the serial-list free recall superiority over probe recall found in Experiments I and II. The implications of the results for choosing recall methods and for characterizing serial and PA input lists were discussed.