Ninety c~mmunity colleg~ students learn~d one of three types of hierarchically organized information presented either as a graphical representatIOn of the hierarchy or as an ordered list of one-directional connections derived irom top to bottom in the hierarchy. Three weeks later Ss were tested for free recall, cued rec~ll, and re~earning. Major fi~dings were: (a) For all three hierarchy types acquisition was much bett:r wIth grap~lcal rather than l~st representation of the hierarchy. (b) All three retention measures Yielded no eVidence that a graphical representation was a superior retrieval device at 3-week recall.In a recent article Nelson and Smith (1972) examined the effect of certain hierarchical structure variables on acquisition and retention of long-term memory (LTM) information. Their most striking finding was that the mode in which hierarchically organized information is presented has a very pronounced effect on acquisition and a lesser, but nonetheless significant, effect on retention of the information 3 weeks later. When the interitem connections to be learned are presented simultaneously in a graphical representation of the hierarchy, learning and retention are much more efficient than when the same hierarchical organization of information is presented simultaneously as an ordered list of one-directional connections between members of item pairs.Though Nelson and Smith have offered no explanation of their graphic presentation effect, presumably it depends at least in part on the fact that hierarchical structure may be less easily apprehended when it is presented as an ordered list of associations. Hierarchical relations such as class inclusion are nonspatial continua and when they are mapped onto a spatial continuum like that offered by a graph, their structure can be more easily apprehended. This particular advantage of graphic presentation clearly relates to the popularity of graphs for representing functional relationships in science, as Attneave (1974) has pointed out. Attneave argues that one human means for representing relationships in the brain is an analogue
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