The effects of constrained rehearsal on judgments of temporal order

Abstract

Tzeng and Cotton’s (1980) study-phase retrieval model holds that temporal encoding of words is acquired through the establishment of contextual associations among list items. Such associations are strengthened by a subject’s ability to rehearse previous items, that is, to engage in displaced rehearsals. Since displaced rehearsals are critical in the study-phase model, to place constraints on such rehearsals should alter performance for the memory of temporal order. Five different rehearsal strategies were employed within a distractor paradigm to test this prediction. Two distinct instructional sets were also administered, with one half of the subjects instructed that serial order information was important, while the remaining subjects were told only that a free recall test would be given. Differences were found for serial position scores among the different rehearsal strategies in support of the study-phase retrieval model. Informed and uninformed instructional groups did not differ in temporal memory. © 1988, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.