The effect of order of presentation on learning of “unrelated” words

Abstract

Two input orders of a set of 16 words were constructed on the basis of output orders of the same set of words given by Ss in an earlier free-recall learning experiment. The High Organization (HO) order was highly congruous with the output orders obtained in the earlier experiments while the Low Organization (LO) order was highly incongruous. One group of Ss learned the word presented in the HO order, the other group in the LO order. In Experiment I, learning took place under conditions of free recall, in Experiment II, under conditions of serial anticipation. In both experiments, HO order was learned considerably faster than the LO order.