Thirty-two undergraduate students learned a list of eight paired associates in which four pairs were composed of short-latency associative reaction time (RT) CVCVC response terms and four pairs of long-latency RT terms. Two of the four response terms of each group were low in meaningfulness and two were high. The list was learned under either a 3-or 6-sec. presentation rate. Consistent with the predictions of the study and with the findings of previous studies which used CVC response terms, the short-latency RT terms were learned faster than the long-latency terms and the effect of RT was most pronounced at the 3-sec. presentation rate. Fewer trials were required to learn the high-than the low-meaningfulness terms, and fewer trials were required for learning at the 6-sec. presentation rate than at the 3-scc. rate. For a sample of 65 CVCVCs, intcrcorrelations among RT, associative frequency, pronunciability, and association value were found to be high. Correlations between log frequency value and the other variables were low.
Subjects were instructed to make associations to words and paralogs (i.e.. associatively encode the units to be recalled) during the study phase of a cued recall experiment. During the recall phase. one group was cued with the associations made during the study phase (subjectgenerated associations); a second group was cued with words previously established as the modal associates to the units to be recalled (experimenter-supplied associations); a third group was not cued. The group cued with subject-generated associations recalled more units than the group cued with experimenter-supplied associations. and both cued groups recalled more units than the uncued groups. Short-latency associative reaction time units were recalled more frequently than long-latency units under the experimenter-supplied cued recall condition, and high-meaningfulness units were recalled more frequently than low-meaningfulness units under all experimental conditions. The results were interpreted as evidence in support of Ley and Locascio's hypothesis that retrieval from memory is a function of associations made at the time of storage.Ley and Locascio (I 970a) have proposed that making an association to a verbal unit during study (associative encoding) facilitates the recall of that unit, and that associative reaction time is related to recall in that it indexes the facility with which an association can be made. These hypotheses were supported in a free recall experiment (Locascio & Ley, 1972a) in which it was found that subjects instructed to make associations to verbal units during study recalled more units than subjects instructed to repeat the units aloud. The results of this study also suggested that subjects instructed "to rehearse silently" may be making associations during study although not specifically instructed to do so. Although the effects of associative reaction time appear to be related primarily to recall rather than to recognition memory (Ley & Locascio, 1970a, 1970b, it is not clear whether making associations improves recall · through the facilitation of memory storage, retrieval from memory, or both. Informal observations of subjects during free recall experiments and reports fromThe authors wish to thank Marion Perlmutter and Robert Sumislawski for their assistance in the collection of the data for this study. This research, which was supported in part by a State University of New York Research Foundation grant-in-aid and faculty research fellowship to the fust author, was presented at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, Missouri, November 1971. Requests for reprints should be sent to Ronald Ley, State University of New York at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue. Albany. New York 12222. 139 subjects following free recall tasks indicated that subjects appear to use associations to the units to be recalled as cues for the elicitation of the units during recall.The primary purpose of the present experiment was to test the hypothesis that associations to verbal units during study (subject-generated asso...
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