Recall of Nonsense Sentences and Self-Reliance

Abstract

60 Ss first heard 20 complete nonsense sentences read on tape and then attempted to recall the correct response element for each sentence after hearing only the stimulus element. The sentences were constructed so that response elements were incongruent with stimulus elements. Half of the sentences were judged by separate groups of judges as interesting and half as uninteresting. Ss who scored high in self-reliance recalled significantly more interesting nonsense sentence elements than those who scored low in self-reliance. Highly self-reliant Ss also recalled more uninteresting nonsense than low self-reliant Ss but the difference was not statistically significant.