RECOGNITION AND FREE RECALL OF ORGANIZED LISTS

It was shown in 2 experiments that organization of the learning material facilitates recall, but has little effect upon recognition performance. In Exp. I, 40 undergraduates learned lists of 40 words, 10 each from 4 conceptual categories or unstructured control lists. In Exp. II, using 42 undergraduates, the learning material consisted of CVCs which were constructed so that letter combinations were highly predictable in the experimental condition and unpredictable in the control groups. Intralist similarity was also varied by using either 5 or 10 different consonants to construct each set of CVCs. High intralist similarity depressed performance for both recall and recognition, but did not interact with list structure. The differential effect of organization upon recall and recognition was interpreted as supporting a 2-process theory of recall and recognition. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1968 American Psychological Association.