PATTERNS IN THE RECALL OF PERSONS IN A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY

This paper examines the cognitive structures people use to organize pe rsons in memory. Members of a Christian fellowship of Taiwanese and Ta iwanese-American young adults free-listed the names of fellowship memb ers. Perceived social proximity was the primary and general associativ e factor in subjects' recalls of fellowship members. Persons that were recalled successively were perceived to be much closer socially than would be expected by chance. Also, there were shorter pauses between a djacently recalled pairs of persons who were socially close than for t hose who were socially distant. Frequency (which persons tend to be re called) and serial order (which persons tend to be mentioned earlier o r later in recall) response patterns were influenced by persons' visib ility in the fellowship and perceived social proximity to a subject. T he results suggest that members of a community share a common cognitiv e structure of community members that is based on the community's soci al structure.