The role of familiarity and of learning instructions in the recall of paired-associates

Abstract

Two groups of subjects, one using a mnemonic technique, and the other, a rote method, learned lists of paired-associates of common nouns. Half of the noun pairs were familiar associations, and half, unfamiliar associations. The mnemonic technique improved only the recall of unfamiliar associations, and ratings obtained from mnemonic subjects suggested that this was due to the inhibiting of development of new associations by existing familiar associations. An examination of subjects' errors revealed that while those for rote subjects tended to be high associates of the stimulus word, this tendency was less marked for the mnemonic subjects. This suggested that the better recall of familiar associations was due to response bias, but that the better recall of material learned with the aid of a mnemonic was due to better storage.