Effects of rehearsal and serial list position on recall.

Abstract

A visual search orienting task and incidental free-recall test were used to examine the effects of "nonelaborative" rehearsal, as defined by Craik and Watkins, on recall from long-term store. Each of 16 40-wordi lists was to be searched for a different target item. To control the length of time targets remained in short-term store, the placement of targets in the search list was varied systematically. Performance on a free-recall test of all target items was a direct function of an item's search-list position, indicating that nonelaborative, "attending" rehearsal may increment an item's retrievability from long-term store. Recall was also dependent on a target's position in the series of target and search-list presentations with both primacy and recency effects present. Since neither differential rehearsal frequency nor differential depth of processing are adequate explanations for the primacy effect observed here, we propose that the search-or entry-set notions of Shiffrin and Anderson may explain the effect.

The effect of repeated writing on memory

“…As in Experiment 1, repeated writing did facilitate overall recognition. However, this effect may have been overestimated because the subjects were tested on the same materials for both tasks (i.e., free recall and recognition; Darley & Glass, 1975). In Experiment 3, we assessed the effect ofrepeated writing on free recall separately from its effect on recognition in order to see whether or not the effect is related to the method of retrieval.…”

“…However, it is known that even mere repetition facilitates long-term memory ifenough effort is put into the rehearsal (Dark & Loftus, 1976;Darley & Glass, 1975;Glenberg, Smith, & Green, 1977;Kamiya, 1982). That being the case, the strategy may well be applied to learning visualmotor stimuli, such as foreign letters and characters, and possibly map routes.…”

Verbal recoding of visual stimuli impairs mentalimagetransformations

“…Indeed, a beneficial effect of verbal rehearsal and elaboration on memory performance has been reported for both verbal (Craik & Tulving, 1975;Darley & Glass, 1975;Maki & Schuler, 1980) and visual materials (Bartlett, Till, & Levy, 1980;Daniel & Ellis, 1972;Ellis & Daniel, 1971). However, as has been shown by a number of studies in which visual materials were used (see, e.g., Bahrick & Boucher, 1968;Bartlett et al, 1980;Nelson & Brooks, 1973;Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990), the effect of facilitation cannot be regarded as a general phenomenon.…”

Verbal Learning and Memory

“…Woodward, Bj ork & Jongeward (117) fo und final free recall to be independent of number of maintenance rehearsals, but at the same time fi nal tests of recognition showed improvement with such rehearsal. More recently, Darley & Glass (26) found fr ee recall to be related to amount of maintenance rehearsal during search of lists fo r a target word. A number of 4O-word lists were searched, each fo r a different target.…”