The grouping of list items is known to improve serial memory accuracy and constrain the nature of temporal errors. A recent study (M. T. Maybery, F. B. R. Parmentier, & D. M. Jones, 2002) showed that grouping results in a temporal organization of the participants' responses that mimics the list structure but not the timing of its presentation.…

In a serial recall task, the "Hebb repetition effect" occurs when recall performance improves for a sequence repeated throughout the experimental session. This phenomenon has been replicated many times. Nevertheless, such cumulative learning seldom leads to perfect recall of the whole sequence, and errors persist. Here the authors report…

Structure was imposed on a tapping task by requiring participants to reproduce sequences of responses to icons organised in spatial clusters. A first experiment featured sequences either segregated or not segregated by clusters. Accuracy was higher for sequences segregated by clusters. Moreover, inter-response times were longer at cluster…

Cognitive psychologists believe that knowledge is multifaceted and that people process more than just semantic content from a stimulus array. To investigate the implications of recall and impression formation processing objectives on the representation of serial order in memory and judgment, subjects participated in two recall and impression…

Results showed that naming latency, for both letters and words, is sensitive to the number of items in the preceding list and also to the serial location of the probe item in the list. (Author)

Results indicate that Ss expectancy for a given test stimulus probability, has its effect on the encoding or decision stage of the memory-scanning process. (Authors)