Instructions, Noun Imagery, and Priority in Free Recall

Abstract

Exp. I varied instructional sets in free recall, with Ss instructed to combine words into sentences, mental pictures, both, or left to their own strategy. The Pictures group was superior on both high- and low-imagery items. There was no evidence for summadon of availability for Ss with both, or for superiority of the Sentences group on low-imagery items. Low-imagery words tended to be recalled early on acquisition trials but be late in output on a delayed test. The second experiment used only own strategy and pictures instructions for lists varying orthogonally on imagery and frequency, with half of the Ss in each group informed of the general list composition. The latter seemed to have no effect, and the pictures set was effective only for high-imagery items. The priority effects were most pronounced for the low-imagery—high frequency subset.