PARAGRAPH ORGANIZATION OF WRITTEN MATERIALS - INFLUENCE OF CONCEPTUAL CLUSTERING UPON LEVEL AND ORGANIZATION OF RECALL

Described 8 attributes of 6 chessmen. In a 3 * 2 design, 42 high school graduates were given 3 free-recall trials to learn this information for the purpose of winning money by evaluating chess play. The 48 sentences were ordered in 3 ways: (1) by the concepts, (2) by the attributes, or (3) by randomization. 1/2 of the Ss were told the conceptual structure of the passage before reading. Conceptual preinformation improved recall as trials progressed. Well-organized passages substantially improved acquisition, and also yielded primacy effects. Recall clustering was relatively high with all passages, but was significantly higher when the passage was organized by concepts. Ability to evaluate chess play correlated only with recall of 3 attributes relating to the moves of the men, and did not differ significantly for the experimental groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.