Effect of Semantic Context on Free Recall of Serial Lists

Abstract

The role of semantic context as a basis for organization was examined by presenting subjects with a serial list of 30 nouns in three different contexts: (a) embedded within a narrative passage having a single semantic theme; (b) embedded within a randomly ordered list of the words contained in the narrative passage; (c) presented with no additional context cues. Results showed that both over-all recall performance and input-output consistency were poorer in the random context than in the other two and that other organizational measures were not highly associated with recall performance. It was concluded that (a) subjects attend to context when organizing serial lists and (b) optimal recall was obtained when subjects' organization was related to order of input.