Massed versus distributed repetition of homographs: A test of the differential-encoding hypothesis

Abstract

A series of three experiments are reported that were designed to test the adequacy of the differential-encoding hypothesis as an explanation of the effect of massed versus distributed repetition on the recall of repeated items in a free-recall list. The critical items were homographs (words with two meanings) and on their two occurrences in a list they were either immediately preceded by items representing the same interpretation (leg neck foot, arm hand foot) or a different interpretation of the homograph (leg neck foot, inch meter foot). When context was controlled in that manner the influence of distributing repetition was completely eliminated, but a very marked influence of context was obtained. When the context was different recall was more than double that obtained when the context was the same.