Effects of orienting tasks on free recall in incidental learning: “difficulty,” “effort,” and “process” explanations

In three experiments involving 22 conditions, amount of free recall was shown to vary with type and combination of orienting task performed during the presentation of a list of 24 low-frequency English nouns. When the orienting task was semantic, that is, it required the subjects to process the meanings of words, recall was significantly higher than that of subjects performing nonsemantic orienting tasks. When two orienting tasks were performed serially during the presentation interval, and one of the tasks was semantic, recall was significantly higher than the recall of groups performing only nonsemantic tasks. When the two tasks were nonsemantic, recall was indistinguishable from the recall of subjects performing single nonsemantic tasks. When the incidental subjects performed a semantic task either singly or in combination with another task, recall was not significantly different from that of a control group of intentional learners who performed no orienting task. The findings are concordant with “process” explanations of the effects of orienting tasks and discordant with “difficulty” or “effort” theories.