THE ROLE OF ORDER INFORMATION IN FREE-RECALL - APPLICATION TO THE WORD-FREQUENCY EFFECT

According to an order-encoding account of free recall, the free recall of unrelated words is organized according to their order of presentat ion in the study list, with unusual items attracting more attentional resources to item encoding than usual items, but at the expense of ord er encoding. This account correctly predicted (a) better free recall a nd serial-order memory for high-frequency (HF) than low-frequency (LF) words in pure lists and (b) equivalent serial-order memory for HF and LF words but superior recall of LF words in mixed lists. The mixed-li st recall results and the finding that overall list recall did not dep end on the proportion of HF words comprising a list are inconsistent w ith G. Gillund and R.M. Shiffrin's (1984) search of associative memory (SAM) explanation. The order-encoding account of the differential eff ects of other variables (e.g., generation and bizarreness) on free rec all in pure versus mixed lists is also discussed.