Organization and part—whole transfer

Some tests of the strategy disruption interpretation of part-list cuing inhibition.

“…We expected inhibition for the inconsistent cues group but not for the consistent cues group. This manipulation was analogous to that used by Rundus (1978). He encouraged participants to form subgroups during part-list learning and then added new items during whole-list learning that were either consistent with or inconsistent with those subgroups.…”

“…Rundus (1978) reported positive transfer in part–whole free-recall learning when the part list preserved the organization of the whole list and negative transfer when the organization of the part list was incompatible with that of the whole list. Even on the very first trial of whole-list learning, participants who learned the compatible part list recalled more old items than did participants who learned the incompatible part list.…”

“…If the study list in a part-list cuing experiment were divided into two subsets, and some of the participants were encouraged to treat them separately, it should be possible to produce effects similar to those observed by Rundus (1978), Johnson (1972), and Novinski (1969). Specifically, cuing with an entire subset should not interfere appreciably with a participants' retrieval strategy if he or she would have retrieved the two subsets separately anyway.…”

Transfer of Training: An Interpretive Review

“…It is highly possible that one of the subjects' difficulties lies in discriminating old fran new terms (Schwartz and Humphreys, 1973). This may particularly be the case when material is presented in cumulative fashion and there is limited opportunity to organize the part-list material (Rundus, 1978).…”