Recall of word lists following learning of sentences and of anomalous and random strings

Abstract

Three experiments examined the recall of word-lists which had been preceded, during learning, by memorization of various strings, sentences, anomalous and random strings (Exps. I and II), kernel sentences, and ten grammatical transformations (supplementary experiment). In Exp. I, recall of the list always followed recall of the string. Experiment II compared four recall conditions: (1) string-recall first, (2) list-recall first, (3) list-recall only, (4) string-recall only. Each recall output was solicited equally often. The S did not know which output would be required until after the learning trial was concluded. The supplementary experiment tested recall under Conditions 1 and 2. Under Recall Condition 1 differences in list-recall were related systematically to variations of the type of preceding string. But when the list was recalled first, or alone, no systematic differences were present. The results were used to evaluate two accounts of the dependency of list recall, under Condition 1, on the type of preceding string.