Effect of Prose Organization upon Free Recall.

Three experiments investigated effects of prose organization on free recall. Passages consisted of five paragraphs of five sentences each and described five attributes of each of five fictitious countries. Passages were organized either by name, by attribute, or randomly. Experiment I demonstrated significantly better recall under attribute than under name or random organization. Experiment II showed that only in the attribute condition is serial recall as good as free recall, suggesting that attribute subjects normally use serial order cues as a basis for retrieval. Experiment III verified this hypothesis; the superiority of the attribute condition in free recall is cancelled when serial order cues are unavailable.

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