Eliminating differential storage of structural components reduces the free-recall spacing effect at moderate to long lags¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q2
Currency · newest study 1979 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Subjects encouraged to form associations showed a strong lag effect in free recall, while subjects prevented from doing so improved only from Lag 2 to Lag 5 and then showed no improvement out to Lag 17. → Glenberg 1979

Evidence¶

Glenberg 1979¶

Glenberg, A. M. (1979). Component-levels theory of the effects of spacing of repetitions on recall and recognition. Memory & Cognition, 7(2), 95-112. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03197590

q2 · i? · causal · r?

The review reports Glenberg's (1977) free-recall comparison of subjects encouraged versus prevented from forming associations among list items, with lags out to 17. The review interprets the attenuated lag effect as elimination of differential storage of structural components. No effect sizes are printed.

"As predicted, the subjects eneouraged to form associations produced a strong lag effeet in reeall. The other group showed an increase in reeall from Lag 2 to Lag 5, and then no improvement (out to Lag 17)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• With incidental orienting tasks that focus processing on individual words and give no incentive to form associations, distributed presentations produce better free recall than massed presentations — related
• Studying a word list in two different rooms yields about 40% more recall than studying it twice in the same room when tested in a new room — related
• When the orienting task prevented interitem associations, the within-list lag effect was attenuated after long retention intervals and this attenuation was not a floor effect — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• With constant judgment standards, the same-different orienting task at repetitions did not affect the within-list lag effect, arguing against inattention and encoding-variability explanations — related
• A within-list lag effect persisted at all retention intervals (up to 7 days) when the orienting task allowed interitem associations, contrary to what a context-only retrieval account predicts for that condition — related