Following learning of 20 girls' first names to a criterion of 18 correct, either with or without first-letter cues and organization, 192 subjects were tested for 1-wk. delayed recall with alphabetic cues present or absent for half of each group. Both simultaneous and successive presentation were used for lists with names having either 5, 10, or 20 different initial letters. Cuing markedly facilitated original learning, which also improved significantly with a higher number of different initial letters. However, uncued learning led to much better delayed recall than cued learning, cued retention was superior to uncued retention, and retention of names with 20 different initial letters was superior to that with only 10 initial letters. These results indicate that alphabetic cues during learning produce less effective processing than uncued conditions, and/or that the greater intratask interference in the semantically similar lists under uncued conditions serves to facilitate delayed retention.Recent evaluations of attributes of memory (Underwood, 1969) have shown somewhat inconsistent effects of orthographic attributes on verbal learning and memory. With lists of unrelated words, free-recall learning can be substantially facilitated by organizing words in alphabetic order (e.g., Barrett, Maier, Ekstrand, & Pellegrino, 1975; Tubing, 1962) or by common first letters (Earhard, 1967). Such orthographic facilitation is not found, however, if semantic organization is readily available as in categorized-word lists (e.g., Lauer & Battig, 1972;Pellegrino, 1974;Wood, 1970). Even with unrelated-word lists, Barrett et al. (1975) report no facilitation of 1 wk. delayed retention produced by alphabetical organization.Such unimpressive effects of orthographic attributes seem inconsistent with the important role(s) played by these and other physical attributes in memory training techniques