Effects of Input Order and Category Cues on Serial Recall

Abstract

To investigate the degree to which category labels served as retrieval cues to facilitate learning of successive lists of nouns, eight lists of 12 nouns each were constructed with one instance from each of 12 categories on each list. The lists were constructed with the category instances either in fixed, rotating, or random serial order. Three related experiments were conducted that showed (a) only lists constructed with categories in a fixed serial order displayed facilitation effects across the learning of several lists, (b) telling the learners about the method of list construction so they could then utilize category labels to aid recall did not eliminate the fixed order vs random and rotating order difference, and (c) the differences in recall for the three types of list construction were eliminated when category cues were provided at input and output. The results were interpreted as supporting a mediational view of learning.