SIMILARITY AND LONG-TERM-MEMORY FOR ORDER

Four experiments examined long-term memory for serial order information under incidental learning conditions. In each experiment, subjects were asked to provide pleasantness ratings about words in short lists. After a period of distraction, a surprise reconstruction task was administered in which reordered list items were required to be placed in their original order of presentation. The results revealed substantial long-term memory for order, and the error patterns mimicked those typically obtained in immediate memory settings. However, unlike the patterns of immediate memory, serial order performance dramatically improved when list items were drawn from the same taxonomic category. An interpretation of the similarity advantage, based on the different retrieval requirements of short- and long-term memory tasks, is proposed and tested. © 1990.