Output effects in multitrial free recall

Abstract

The role of the output phase in multitrial free recall was examined in three studies in which each input phase was followed by various numbers of successive output phases. Experiment I demonstrated that after comparable numbers of input phases, intertrial retention in conditions with three, five, or seven successive output phases was superior to that in a standard condition. Using categorized word lists, Experiment II indicated the superior intertrial retention to be due to the recall of more words within categories rather than to the recall of more categories. Experiment III demonstrated that the higher intertrial retention scores did not depend on the overt retrieval of information. It was concluded that opportunities for the attempted retrieval of information produce an increased accessibility of the contents of established higher-order memory units.