Abstract
Carterette & Coleman (1963) report that, at least for high organizers, subjective organization appears to follow recall. Since such a relationship seriously brings into question the hypothesis that memory is largely dependent upon subjective organization, a replication and extension of Carterette and Coleman’s experiment was undertaken. When Ss were divided into high, moderate, and low organizers, superior recall performance was clearly associated with greater organization. However, increases in organization for the low and moderate organizers were minimal, despite marked improvements in recall. Thus, the general problem raised by Carterette and Coleman about the adequacy of the organizational hypothesis to account for the free recall of lists of unrelated words was upheld.
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This research was supported by a grant to the first author from the University of Hawaii Research Council. The authors were privileged to benefit from the comments and unpublished data of Edward C. Carterette. Craig S. Kowalski assisted in analyzing the data. Computer time was generously made available by the University of Hawaii Statistical and Computing Center. This report is based on a paper presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Los Angeles, April 1970.
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Shapiro, S.I., Bell, J.A. Subjective organization and free recall: Performance of high, moderate, and low organizers. Psychon Sci 21, 71–73 (1970). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335769
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335769