Determinants of Primacy for Items in Continuous Serial Learning

Abstract

This study investigates the learning of continuous serial lists of nonsense syllables in terms of the strategies by which Ss select the syllables to be learned first. Three hypotheses were tested and verified by the results: (a) Ss select the first temporal item of a series as cognitively first when instructional and structural bases for differentiation are not provided by E; (b) Ss also tend to cognize a structurally isolated item as first in the series; and (c) the relative effectiveness of these two anchoring tendencies depends upon the position of the structurally isolated syllable within the temporal series. Results support the theory that the cognition of one or more “beginning” items establishes the serial-position curve because the anchors provided by these items, which are learned first, facilitate the acquisition of the remaining items.