Effects of prose organization and individual differences on free recall

SUBJECTS TESTED WERE 75 INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS AT FLORIDA STATE. PASSAGES ORGANIZED BY CONCEPT NAMES, CONCEPT ATTRIBUTES, AND ALSO RANDOMIZED PASSAGES WERE PRESENTED TO THE STUDENTS FOR STUDY AND RECALL. THE STUDENTS WERE THEN TESTED FOR VERBAL COMPREHENSION, VERBAL CREATIVITY, ASSOCIATE MEMORY, CLOSURE, AND SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION. THE GROUP THAT WAS PRESENTED PASSAGES ORGANIZED BY CONCEPT NAMES RECALLED MORE CORRECT STATEMENTS THAN THE OTHER GROUPS. CLUSTERING BY NAMES WAS DOMINANT FOR ALL GROUPS, AND UNIQUE PATTERNS OF CORRELATIONS WERE OBTAINED AMONG COGNITIVE FACTORS AND RECALL SCORES FOR EACH GROUP. THESE RESULTS INDICATED THAT LEARNING A HIGHLY ORGANIZED PASSAGE AND USING A PREFERRED RECALL STRATEGY YIELDED SUPERIOR RECALL. THE ANALYSIS OF THE SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION DATA INDICATED THAT HIGH ORGANIZERS WERE NOT HIGHLY INFLUENCED BY THE INHERENT STRUCTURE OF THE LEARNING MATERIALS, WHEREAS LOW ORGANIZERS WERE. THUS STUDENTS LOW IN SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION REQUIRE HIGHLY STRUCTURED MATERIALS IF THEY ARE TO RECALL THEM ADEQUATELY, WHILE STUDENTS HIGH IN SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION PERFORM SIMILARLY ON MATERIALS WITH HIGH AND LOW STRUCTURE.