The Word Frequency and List Length Effects on Cued Recall

Abstract

The list length effect is a phenomenon in which performance improves when the number of studied items decreases. This effect is present in most memory tasks. However, Dennis and Humphreys (2001) showed that the list length effect can be eliminated in recognition memory tasks if controls for retention interval, attention, rehearsal and contextual reinstatement are employed. In some unpublished data we have also found a null-list length effect in cued recall experiments, when it is presented in an experiment set that contains cued recall, associated recognition, and single item recognition. Therefore we would like to single out the cued recall experiment to see if we can replicate this finding. Word frequency effects (high frequency advantages on recall and low frequency advantages on recognition) represent another disassociation between recognition and recall. We are also interested in the word frequency effect in cued recall and examine it separately for cue and target items. In the experiment, we manipulated both the list length and word frequency effects with a filler task between study and test. We found that there is a small difference between list length but not statistically significant. There are also low frequency advantage for cues and high frequency advantage for targets. These findings place critical constraints on viable models of cued recall.