Coding Efficiency and Mnemonic Transformations in Free Recall

Abstract

Verbal coding research suggests that many mnemonic processes can be explained in terms of the control transformations necessary to produce them. This experiment compared learning of a categorized noun list across both imagery and clustering instructional sets. Twelve control subjects received no instructions. In each instructional group (N = 72, ns = 12), half of the subjects saw the category names before learning, and the alternate half did not see the names. Mnemonic conditions did not differ in words recalled, and the control subjects remembered significantly fewer words than either mnemonic group. Providing names before list learning did not affect the amount recalled. An analysis of organization scores essentially supported previous findings involving intermnemonic comparisons.