Organizational attributes in list acquisition and retention.

The effects of alphabetic organization on the acquisition and delayed retention of semantically similar words.

“…The conflict of the present delayed-retention differences with the lack of any such effects in previous studies may well be due to the present use of lists of semantically similar girls' first names, as contrasted with the previous lists of unrelated low-frequency words (Barrett et al, 1975) or semantically categorized words (Pellegrino, 1974) which appear to involve less intratask interference (although direct evidence on this point is lacking). There is universal agreement, however, that even when orthographic organization is demonstrably used during the retention test there is no facilitation of de-layed recall when acquisition has been equated except for differential emphasis on such organization, which questions the central role(s) of such attributes and organization in current memory training techniques (e.g., Lorayne & Lucas, 1975).…”

“…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.…”

“…Of particular interest are this study's findings for 1-wk. delayed recall with respect to the theoretical as well as empirical problems evolving from the aforementioned evidence that orthographic attributes are totally ineffective for delayed recall even when they facilitate original learning and/or immediate recall (Barrett et al, 1975;Pellegrino, 1974). The "memory models" spawned by the alleged cognitive information-processing "revolution" typically assume (often implicitly) that any cue or mnemonic which facilitates retrieval during learning, and/or immediate recall extending beyond short-term memory, should continue to be 182 effective in delayed retention, as is claimed also by recent popularizers of memory training (e.g., Lorayne & Lucas, 1975).…”

Access to the memory trace through orthographic and categoric information.

“…Only a few previous experiments have examined orthographic and semantic cued recall within one experimental design (Barrett, Maier, Ekstrand, & Pellegrino, 1975;Lauer & Battig, 1972;Luek, Cicala, & McLaughlin, 1976;Mondani, Pellegrino, & Battig, 1973;Pellegrino, 1974;Wood, 1970, Experiment III), and although cuing with semantically related associates has been a very popular technique (e.g., Thomson & Tulving, 1970), very rarely has cuing with initial letters been investigated by itself (Earhard, 1967a(Earhard, , 1967b(Earhard, , 1969Lauer, Streby, & Battig, 1976;Tulving, 1962;Warren, 1974;Zavortink & Keppel, 1968). At least two experiments have included the orthographic and semantic cues together for the same item for the same subject at the same time (Lauer & Battig, 1972;Pellegrino, 1974).…”

“…Furthermore, some of the implications of the reported results are contradictory. Pellegrino (1974), for example, reported subjects took fewer trials to criterion when organizing according to two hierarchical levels (in his case categories within letters or letters within categories), whereas Lauer and Battig (1972) reported better retrieval with category names alone than with alphabetic letters alone or with both category and alphabetic cues together. Also, some of the conclusions drawn from the reported results seem premature; for example, the initial letter of a word is described as a "weak cue" (Lauer & Battig, 1972), but evidence for this was gathered under conditions where subjects were free to use the first letters or not, and where the measures of organization themselves revealed much less alphabetic clustering than taxonomic clustering.…”