Spatial Grouping and Free Recall

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Abstract
Fifteen nouns with a mean imagery value of 6.15 were presented in a single vertical column to human subjects in the ungrouped condition and in 3 groups of 5 words each in the grouped condition. The word groups were located in the upper-left, middle and lower-right portions of the study pages. Each study page contained a different random sequence of the words, with the restriction that each word always occurred within the same 3rd of the list. An analysis of variance with trials as a repeated measure yielded no main effect of groupings. Performance increased with trials. The interaction of grouping and trials was also significant. Recall was greater in the ungrouped conditon than the grouped for the first 2 trials with the reverse occurring from the 3rd trial forward. A similar trend occurred within each 3rd of the list. The ability of subjects to benefit in the long run from most any arbitrarily grouped presentation of unrelated words was suggested, although on the early trials they may do better left to their own devices.

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