The Effects of Syntactic Structure on Serial Position in Free Recall
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Authors
Stealy, June
Issue Date
1965
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Ss learned English and nonsense lists structured syntactically
at various levels to test the hypothesis that pr1macy
effects in free reoa11 are facilitated in relation to the
degree of structuring present. The presence of English endings,
articles, and punctuation did not differentiate the recall of
a "nonsense sentence" from that of a nonsense control list;
nor did syntactic ordering of the English-appearing nonsense
words facilitate learning speed or primacy in comparison with
a scrambled list of the same words. Four forms of each of two
English sentences consisted of the original sentence and
scramblings of sentence units at three levels of a hierarchical
grammar. The increase in primacy effects as a function of
syntax for the three most highly structured forms was found
to be related to a shift in order of recall, which is, in turn,
subject to pre-existing recall habits. Primacy effects in the
unstructured scrambling of individual words are attributed to
interitem associative clustering.
Description
vii, 25 p.
Citation
Publisher
License
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