STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF WORDS ENCODED IN MEMORY

3 experiments explored the matter of independent vs. organized storage of unrelated items by requiring Ss to recall, in alphabetic order, words they had been memorizing for various numbers of trials under free, serial, or cued recall conditions. The intratrial locus of the alphabetic instructions was also varied, i.e., 1/2 of the Ss were told about the change in task requirements before the presentation of the items and 1/2 were told after the items had been presented to them. It was found that immediate alphabetical recall (1) varied inversely with increasing amounts of practice prior to the alphabetic test, and (2) depended on whether the instructions were given before or after storage of the items, the change of instructions after storage being associated with the inferior recall. These results contradicted the notion that individual items are stored completely independently and supported the position that appropriate storage facilitates retrieval by providing information as to the retrieval cues and the direction in which to search for the next item during recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.