Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition

1991, Vol. 17, No. I, 103-114

Copyright 1991 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

D278-7393/91/S3.OO

Does Organization Improve Priming?

Virginia A. Rappold and Shahin Hashtroudi
George Washington University
In five experiments, the effects of organization on implicit memory or priming tests were
compared with its effects on the explicit memory tests of free and cued recall. Organization was
manipulated by varying list structure (blocked vs. random presentation of categorized items) and
by instructions. The results showed that organization had parallel effects on the categoryproduction priming test and free- and cued-recall tests; performance was enhanced by organization on both types of tests. It was also demonstrated that the effect of organization on priming
was limited to the category-production test and was not obtained with the word-identification
priming test. These results suggest that performance on implicit and explicit memory tests is
similarly affected by experimental manipulations when both types of tests rely on conceptually
driven processing. In addition, performance on two implicit tests is dissociated when one test
relies on conceptually driven processing and the other on data-driven processing.

Recent interest in studying the relations between explicit

{e.g., recall and recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory tests has been motivated by the idea that memory is not
a single unified system but rather consists of several independent forms. These forms may be differentially affected by
certain experimental manipulations and by memory disorders
such as amnesia (Cohen & Squire, 1980;Tulving, 1983, 1985;
Warrington & Weiskrantz, 1982). Although a few studies have
reported parallel effects of certain experimental manipulations
on implicit and explicit tests (Blaxton, 1989; Graf & Schacter,
1985; Jacoby, 1983a; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Roediger &
Blaxton, 1987b; Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989), the
majority of studies have focused on demonstrating differences
rather than similarities between the two types of tests. In
addition, most theoretical accounts of the relations between
implicit and explicit tests have been formulated primarily to
explain the differences between the two types of tests (Cohen
& Squire, 1980; Graf & Mandler, 1984; Tulving, 1983; see
Schacter, 1987 and Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988, for
reviews). The purpose of the present experiments was to
explore the similarities as well as the differences between
implicit and explicit tests in their sensitivity to organizational
manipulations.
One recent theoretical framework that suggests certain similarities between implicit and explicit tests is the transferappropriate processing framework that emphasizes the distinction between data-driven and conceptually driven processes (Jacoby, 1983b; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987b; Roediger,

Weldon, & Challis, 1989; see also Johnson, 1983). According

to this framework, both implicit and explicit memory tests
involve a mixture of data-driven and conceptually driven
processes. Data-driven processes are guided in large part by
the physical features of information, whereas conceptually
driven processes are self-initiated activities that are guided by
subjects' conceptual knowledge and the experimental context.
Typically, implicit tests rely more on data-driven processing,
whereas explicit tests depend on conceptually driven processing. However, the data-driven versus conceptually driven
distinction does not necessarily parallel the implicit/explicit
distinction, because implicit tests may be conceptually driven
and explicit tests may be data driven. Consequently, depending on the particular tests involved, performance on implicit
tests may be similar to or different from performance on
explicit tests. If one selects a conceptually driven implicit test
and compares it with a conceptually driven explicit test, then
performance on these tests would be similarly affected by
experimental manipulations. In addition, dissociations in performance between two implicit or two explicit tests may be
observed if one of the tests is conceptually driven and the
other is data driven.
Consistent with these assumptions, Blaxton (1989) demonstrated that generating a word to a cue (a conceptually
driven manipulation) improved performance on the explicit
free-recall and semantic cued-recall tests as well as on a test
of general knowledge, a conceptually driven implicit memory
or priming test. In addition, generation did not improve
performance on a data-driven priming test (word-fragment
completion). Similarly, Srinivas and Roediger (1990) showed
that generation and levels of processing (both conceptually
driven manipulations) enhanced performance on the conceptually driven category-production test but not on the datadriven word-fragment completion test.
The present experiments were designed to further demonstrate similarities between implicit and explicit tests and differences between two implicit tests by varying organization.
Organization refers to the process of grouping and interrelating items on the basis of common properties. The manipulation of organization seems to be an ideal method for varying
conceptually driven processing because organizing items

This research was supported by a Biomedical Research Support

Grant from the George Washington University to Shahin Hashtroudi.
We thank Teresa Blaxton, Roddy Roediger, Betsy Parker, Sharon
Mutter, and especially Barbara Schwartz and Sue Ferguson for their
valuable comments on this article. We also thank Peter Graf, Colin
MacLeod, and Daniel Schacter for their helpful suggestions for revision. We are grateful to Carol Reisen for her help in analyzing the
data and to Sheri Denmark for her help in testing the subjects.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Shahin Hashtroudi, Department of Psychology, George Washington
University, Washington, DC 20052.
103

104

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDI

clearly requires self-initiated activities that are guided by

subjects' conceptual knowledge. Typically, categorized or associatively related word lists are used to induce organization
because the inherent structure of these lists emphasizes the
processing of common features of the items (Bousfield, 1953;
Jenkins, Mink, & Russell, 1958). Thus, in a free-recall test, if
a list consists of several instances of taxonomic categories
(e.g., animals, occupations), it will be remembered better than
a list of unrelated words (Hunt & Einstein, 1981). Any variable that promotes the formation of interitem relationships
will enhance recall. For example, blocked presentation of list
items, in which instances of a category are presented adjacently at study, increases recall compared with random presentation (Bower, Clark, Lesgold. & Winzenz, 1969; Cofer,
Bruce. & Reicher, 1966;Dallett. 1964; Horton& Cofer, 1975).
It has been well established that categorical organization is
an important determinant of performance on explicit memory
tests such as free and cued recall (Bousfield, 1953; Bower et
al., 1969; Cofer et al, 1966; Dallett, 1964; see Tulving &
Donaldson, 1972). However, there have been no studies that
have examined the effects of categorical organization on
implicit memory tests. We compared the effects of categorical
organization on the explicit tests of free and cued recall to its
effects on the implicit test of category production. In the
category-production test, after studying a list of items belonging to several taxonomic categories, subjects are presented
with category titles and are asked to produce the first instances
of the category that come to mind. Some of the category titles
at test refer to instances presented at study (studied categories)
and others do not (unstudied categories). Priming is determined by comparing the probability of producing instances
from the studied categories to the probability of producing
instances from the unstudied categories (Graf, Shimamura, &
Squire, 1985; Kihlstrom, 1980; Srinivas & Roedigcr, 1990).
Category production is considered an implicit test because
subjects are not asked to deliberately remember category
instances from the study list, but they are simply asked to
produce instances that come to mind.
Category production was selected because it is similar to
implicit memory or priming tests as well as to explicit tests.
On the one hand, category production resembles priming tests
such as word identification, word-stem completion, and partial-word identification in that it is not disrupted by amnesia
(Gardner, Boiler, Moreines, & Butters, 1973; Graf et al., 1985;
Hamann, 1989; Kihlstrom, 1980). On the other hand, category production resembles free and cued recall because performance on this test requires conceptual knowledge of taxonomic categories. In addition, this test has been shown to
benefit from conceptually driven manipulations such as generation and levels of processing, and is not affected by datadriven manipulations such as changes in modality of presentation between study and test (Srinivas & Roediger, 1990).
To the extent that the category-production test involves conceptually driven processing, it should be improved by conditions that encourage organization. Therefore, we expected
parallel effects of organization on category production and
free and cued recall.
We also compared the efTect of organization on category
production with its effect on the word-identification priming
test. Word identification has been shown to be sensitive to

changes in perceptual aspects of items and, as such, is considered to be a data-driven test (Jacoby, 1983b; Jacoby & Dallas,
1981; Roedigcr & Blaxton, 1987b; Roedigcr, Wcldon, &
Challis, 1989). In addition, this test is not affected by manipulations that vary conceptually driven processing such as
levels of processing manipulations (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981).
Thus, we expected that word identification would not be
affected by organization, and that performance on this test
would be dissociated from performance on the categoryproduction test.
Five experiments were conducted to examine the effects of
organization on implicit and explicit tests. In Experiment 1,
we studied the effects of organization on category production
and free and cued recall by varying the method of presentation
of the items. Study words from a category were presented
either in a blocked order to encourage organization or in a
random order. In Experiment 2. we examined the generality
of the effect of organization on category production and free
and cued recall by using both high- and low-frequency instances of categories. In Experiment 3, we manipulated organization by giving organizational instructions rather than
by varying list structure. In Experiment 4, the time course of
forgetting in category production was compared with that of
free and cued recall. Finally, in Experiment 5, the effect of
method of presentation (blocked vs. random) on category
production was compared with its effect on word identification.

Experiment 1
The purpose of this experiment was to compare the effects
of organization on category production and free and cued
recall. One criterion proposed for classifying tests as data- or
conceptually driven is that data-driven tests should not be
affected by manipulations that vary elaborative or conceptually driven processing such as organization, whereas conceptually driven tests should benefit from these manipulations
(Hashtroudi, Ferguson, Rappold, & Chrosniak, 1988; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987a, 1987b; Roediger, Weldon, & Challis,
1989). To examine whether category production benefits from
conceptually driven processing, we used two study conditions
in which organization was varied by changing list structure
(Bower et al., 1969; Cofer et al., 1966). In the first condition,
subjects were presented with categorically related words (e.g.,
eagle, falcon, sparrow) from several different categories (e.g.,
animals, fruits) in a blocked order for study. In the second
condition, the same categorically related words were presented
in a random order. It was expected that the list structure in
the blocked condition would encourage subjects to interrelate
the items actively and to form a unitized memory representation.
The blocked/random organizational manipulation has
been used widely in free and cued recall, and has been shown
to be effective in improving performance on these explicit
memory tests (e.g., Bower el al., 1969; Cofer et al., 1966;
Dallett, 1964; Horton & Cofer, 1975). As with the previous
studies, we expected that blocked presentation would result
in higher recall than random presentation. The comparison
of the effect of method of presentation (blocked vs. random)

105

PRIMING AND ORGANIZATION

on category production with free- and cued-rccall tests would

indicate whether category production also benefits from organization.

Method
Subjects. The subjects were 96 undergraduates from George
Washington University who received course credit for their participation. Subjects were all tested individually in this experiment and
in all the other experiments reported in this article.
Design and materials. The design was a 2 x 3 factorial with
method of presentation (blocked and random) and type of test
(category production, free recall, and cued recall) as between-subjects
variables. Sixteen subjects were tested in each condition.
The materials were selected from the Battig and Montague (1969)
norms in accordance with the procedures described in Graf et al.
(1985). From each of the 12 categories (a sport, a fruit, a piece of
furniture, a kitchen utensil, a bird, a color, a four-footed animal, an
article of clothing, a tree, a musical instrument, a part of the human
body, a vegetable), six common instances (e.g., softball, skiing, boxing,
volleyball, polo, hunting) were selected. These items were not ranked
among the 10 most frequent instances, but each item was listed by at
least 10 subjects in the sample of 400 subjects used in the Battig and
Montague normative study. The average rank of the selected instances
was 23.30 (range: 11-48).
Six of the 12 categories were assigned to one list and six to another,
resulting in two lists of 36 items (6 categories of 6 items each).
Subjects heard one of the lists (study list) during the learning phase;
the other list served as a new list at test. Across subjects, each list
served equally often as a study list and as a new list. The two lists
were matched in "category potency" (Battig & Montague, 1969), that
is, in the number of instances produced by subjects in 30 s for a given
category (List 1, M = 8.60; List 2,M = 7.80) and in the average rank
of the items {List 1, M= 23.08; List 2, M = 23.42).
Procedure. At acquisition, a list of 36 items was presented auditorily at a rate of 3 s per item. Half of the subjects heard the instances
of the categories in a random order with the restriction that no 2
items from the same category occurred adjacently. The other half of
the subjects heard the instances in a blocked order with all the items
from one category occurring adjacently. Subjects were instructed to
learn the list for a later memory test, but the type of test was not
specified.
Immediately after the study list, subjects were given one of the
three different types of tests. In the category-production condition,
subjects were given the 12 category titles one at a time in a random
order. They were asked to produce eight instances for each category
title. Eight instances were required to increase the likelihood that
subjects produce instances other than the most common ones (Graf
et al., 1985). Six of the 12 categories were always from the study list,
and the other 6 were from the list that had not been presented to that
subject (new list). Subjects were instructed to "say eight things that
belong to that category as fast as possible.1' However, no time limit
was specified. Subjects rarely had difficulty generating eight instances.
To familiarize the subjects with the procedure, they were given a
sample category title (a relative) and three examples of that title
(father, brother, and sister) with instructions to produce five more
instances of that category as fast as they could (Graf et al., 1985).
In the free-recall condition, subjects were instructed to write down
as many words as they could remember from the study list. They
were given 3 min for recall but most subjects finished faster.
The cued-recall condition differed from the category-production
condition only with respect to instructions. Subjects were given the
12 category titles one at a time, and were told that some of the
categories would refer to words from the study list and others would
not. They were instructed to "use the category names as cues to help
recall the words from the study list." Again no time limit was specified.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 shows the proportions of responses in the three test
conditions as a function of method of presentation. For the
category-production test, the proportion of category instances
produced from the new list not presented to the subject at
study provides a baseline score. The priming measure is the
difference between the proportion of category instances produced from the old (study) list and the proportion of instances
produced from the new list. The cued-recall measure was also
based on the difference between the proportion of instances
recalled from the study list and the proportion of instances
produced from the new list. However, because subjects very
rarely produced instances for the categories that were not
presented at study, correcting for these items did not change
the cued-recall score. Thus, only the proportion of instances
recalled from the study list (old items) is reported in the tables.
The significance level was set at .05 for all statistical tests
reported in this article. Throughout the article, we report
separate analyses for category production and free- and cuedrecall tests. Because of the scaling differences between category-production and recall tests, we prefer the separate analyses to overall analyses of variance (ANOVAs), with test type
as a variable. Nevertheless, to assess directly the effect of test
type, we also briefly report the interactions involving this
variable from the overall ANOVAs. It should be noted that,
in most cases, the results from the overall analyses were
consistent with those of the separate analyses.
Analyses of the category-production test showed that priming was significantly higher in the blocked than in the random
condition, F( 1, 30) - 14.71, MSe = 0.008, although significant
priming occurred in both conditions (both fs > 1.75). Clearly,
priming was facilitated by organization.
Blocked presentation also resulted in higher performance
than random presentation in free recall, F(l, 30) = 12.59,
MSe = 0.009, and in cued recall, F(\, 30) = 8.73, MS, =
0.014. In addition, in agreement with the results of the separate analyses, an overall 2 x 3 ANOVA with presentation
method and test type as variables showed no significant
interaction between these variables, F < 1, thereby suggesting
that organization had similar effects on the three tests.
One explanation for the similar effects of organization on
category production and recall is that category-production
performance is mediated by explicit retrieval. That is, subjects
in this condition do not simply attempt to produce the first
Table 1
Experiment 1: Proportions of Responses in Category
Production, Free Recall, and Cued Recall as a Function of
Method of Presentation
Method of presentation
Measure
Category production
Old
New
Priming
Free recall
Old
Cued recall
Old

Blocked

Random

.32
.09
.23

.20
.10
,10

.41

.29

.39

.27

106

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDI

items that come lo mind, but they deliberately retrieve the

study list at test and consciously recall the items from a given
category. To rule out this explanation, we examined the first
three items produced by subjects in this test. The results
showed that in category production only 33% of the first three
items produced at test were on the study list. However, in free
recall 96% of the first three items recalled were on the study
list, and in cued recall 88% were on the study list. It appears
that subjects use different strategies in category production
than in free- and cued-recall tests. If subjects had been using
explicit retrieval strategies, then a large proportion of the first
few items produced at test would have been from the study
list.
It could also be argued that an explicit retrieval strategy
would not be used until a few categories were presented and
subjects "caught on" to the nature of the test. If this were the
case, the percentage of words produced from the study list
would increase from the beginning to the end of the test.
Thus, we compared the percentage of study words produced
for the first two (30%), the middle two (22%), and the last
two (26%) categories at test, for both blocked and random
presentations. An ANOVA on these data showed no main
effect of category position, F(2, 60) = 2.00, MSe 0.023, and
no interaction of category position with method of presentation, F < 1. For both blocked and random presentations, the
percentage of study words produced did not increase from
the first two to the last two categories of the test.
It should be noted that although cued recall typically results
in higher performance than free recall (e.g., Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966; Wood, 1967), in this experiment and in the other
experiments reported here, cued recall was not significantly
higher than free recall. There are, however, several differences
between the cued-recall procedure used in our experiments
and the earlier studies. In addition to presenting the titles of
the six categories that referred to instances given at study, we
also presented the titles of six new categories. Furthermore,
category titles were presented one at a time, and subjects were
asked to recall the words out loud. Any or all of these
differences could have resulted in the lower level of cued recall
in our experiments.
Overall, the results of Experiment 1 clearly demonstrate
that organization, as varied by method of presentation, does
not produce dissociations between performance on priming
and recall tests when priming is assessed by the categoryproduction test. Relative to random presentation, blocked
presentation increased the amount of priming as well as the
amount of free and cued recall. The effect of organization on
the amount of priming in category production is consistent
with the finding that generation and levels of processing
manipulations also enhance priming in this test (Srinivas &
Roediger, 1990). These results suggest that, as with the general-knowledge priming test (Blaxlon, 1989), category production relies on conceptually driven processing.
Experiment 2
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the
generality of the effect of method of presentation on categoryproduction priming. Specifically, we examined whether the
effect of organization on priming holds with words other than

those used in Experiment 1. In both Experiment 1 and an

earlier experiment reported by Graf et al. (1985), the selected
items were not ranked among the 10 most frequently produced instances for a category. In the present experiment, we
used both high- and low-frequency instances of categories,
and we compared the effects of method of presentation on
category production and free and cued recall with these two
types of items.
A second purpose of this experiment was to provide more
compelling evidence that the parallel effects of organization
on category production and recall were not due to the use of
explicit retrieval strategies in category production. Schacter,
Bowers, and Booker (1989) have suggested using a retrieval
intmtionality criterion as an empirical means of ruling out
explicit retrieval in priming tests. According to this criterion,
explicit retrieval in an implicit memory test may be ruled out
if one can identify an experimental variable that has different
effects on the implicit and explicit memory tests, within the
same experiment, using the same nominal cues and only
varying instructions (implicit and explicit). It is assumed that
when external cues are held constant in implicit and explicit
tests and only the instructions are varied, the differential effect
of the experimental manipulation can be attributed to the
differences in the intentional and unintentional retrieval processes that are used to perform the tests. That is, under these
conditions, one can be certain that subjects do not treat the
implicit memory test as an explicit test. Following the Schacter
et al. (1989) criterion, in the present experiment we examined
the effect of category-instance frequency on cued recall and
category production to determine whether this variable had
different effects on these two tests. As in Experiment 1,
category production and cued recall differed only in instructions.
Previous studies that have investigated the effect of organization on free recall have demonstrated that free recall is
higher with high-frequency than with low-frequency instances
of categories (Bousfield, Cohen, & Whitmarsh, 1958; Cofer et
al., 1966; Horton & Cofer, 1975). Thus, it is likely that cued
recall would also be higher with high-frequency instances than
with low-frequency instances. There is, however, no a priori
reason for expecting that category-production priming would
be different for high- and low-frequency instances of categories. Consequently, if category-instance frequency has different effects on category production and cued recall, it can
be assumed that subjects are treating these two tests differently. One can then argue strongly against the idea that the
parallel effects of organization on category production and
cued recall occur because subjects treat category production
as an explicit memory test (see Schacter et al., 1989, for an
extended discussion of this point).

Method
Subjects. The subjects were 144 undergraduates from the same
subject pool used in Experiment 1.
Design and materials. The design was a 2 x 2 x 3 factorial with
presentation method (blocked and random), frequency of the category
instances (high-frequency and low-frequency instances), and test type
(category production, free recall, and cued recall) as between-subjects
variables. Twelve subjects were tested in each condition.

107

PRIMING AND ORGANIZATION

As in Experiment 1, stimulus materials were selected from the
Battig and Montague (1969) norms. Six high-frequency and six lowfrequency instances were selected from the 12 categories used in
Experiment 1. We did not use the three highest and the three lowest
frequency instances to avoid ceiling and floor effects. The lists were
composed of the next six highest and next six lowest instances. The
average rank for the instances was 7.90 (range: 4-15) for the highfrequency instances and 27.97 (range: 16-45) for the low-frequency
instances.
The pool of 72 high-frequency instances was divided into two lists
of 36 items (six categories of 6 items each). Similarly, the pool of lowfrequency items was divided into two lists of 36 items consisting of
the same six categories as the high-frequency instances but with 6
low-frequency instances for each category. One of the two lists was
used as a study list and the other as a new list at test. Across subjects,
each list served equally often as the study list and the new list. The
two high-frequency lists were matched in the average rank of the
instances (List 1, M = 8.52; List 2, M= 7.27). The two low-frequency
lists were also matched in the average rank of the instances (List 1,
M = 27.82; List 2, M = 28.10). Category potency was the same as
Experiment 1.
Procedure. At acquisition, subjects were instructed to try to learn
each word for a later memory test, but the type of test was not
specified.
At test, as in Experiment 1, subjects in the category-production
condition heard 12 randomly presented category titles one at a time
and were asked to produce eight instances for each category (Graf et
al., 1985). Six of the presented categories were from the study list,
and the other six were from the list that had not been presented to
that subject. In cued recall, subjects were given the same titles and
were asked to use these titles as cues to recall the words from the
study list. Other procedural details of category production, cued recall,
and free recall were the same as those in Experiment 1.

Results and Discussion

The proportions of responses in the test conditions as a
function of presentation method and frequency of the category instances are shown in Table 2. The priming and cued-

recall measures were derived in the same manner as in Experiment 1.

Analyses of category production showed that blocked presentation led to higher priming than random presentation,
F{\, 44) = 7.65, A/5"e = 0.010, although priming was significant with both methods of presentation (both /s > 1.71). In
addition, there was no significant difference in category-production performance between high-frequency and low-frequency instances of categories, F < 1; significant priming
occurred with both types of words (both /s > 1.71).
An examination of Table 2 suggests that the difference in
priming between blocked and random presentations was
slightly greater for low-frequency than for high-frequency
instances. However, analyses of the data showed no significant
interaction of method of presentation and instance frequency,
F{\, 44) = 1.00, MSe = 0.010. Organization seemed to have
similar effects on the priming of high-frequency and lowfrequency instances of categories.
As with category production, blocked presentation led to
higher performance than random presentation in free recall,
F(l, 44) - 9.51, MS, = 0.009, and in cued recall, F(U 44) =
12.76, MSt = 0.017. However, unlike priming in category
production, performance was higher with high-frequency than
with low-frequency instances in both free recall, F( 1, 44) =
23.13, MSe = 0.009, and cued-recall tests, F(\, 44) = 19.06,
MSe = 0.017. There was no significant interaction of presentation method and instance frequency in either of the recall
tests (both f s < 1).
An overall 2 x 2 x 3 ANOVA with method of presentation,
instance frequency, and test type as variables confirmed the
results of the separate analyses. There was a significant interaction of instance frequency and test type, F(2, 132) = 6.41,
MSe = 0.012, indicating that free recall, F(l, 132) = 17.92,
MSe = 0.012, and cued recall, F(U 132) = 27.42, MS, =
0.012, were higher with high-frequency than with low-frequency instances, but there was no significant difference

Table 2
Experiment 2: Proportions of Responses in Category Production, Free Recall, and Cued
Recall as a Function of Method of Presentation and Category Instance Frequency
Method of presentation
Measure
Category production
High-frequency instances
Old
New
Priming
Low-frequency instances
Old
New
Priming
Free recall
High-frequency instances
Old
Low-frequency instances
Old
Cued recall
High-frequency instances
Old
Low-frequency instances
Old

Blocked

Random

.57
.36
.21

.50
.34
.16

.28
.06
.22

.20
.08
.12

.57

.47

.42

.34

.58

.45

.42

.28

108

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDI

between the two types of instances in category production, F

< 1. No other interactions were significant.
In this experiment, we again examined the first three items
at test to determine whether subjects were using similar strategies in category production and free and cued recall In
category production, only 35% of the first three items produced at test were from the study list, whereas in free recall
96% of the first three items recalled were from the study list
and in cued recall 97% were from the study list. We also
examined whether production of study words increased when
subjects "caught on" to the nature of the test. Again, there
was no increase in the production of study words from the
first two (39%), to the middle two (39%), and the last two
(40%) categories of the test, F < 1, for either blocked or
random presentations (^(2, 92) = 1.79, MSe = 0.015, for the
interaction of method of presentation and category position).
In short, the findings of Experiment 2 demonstrate that the
effect of organization on category production is observed with
both high-frequency and low-frequency instances of categories
and is not limited to the particular set of words used in
Experiment 1. It is also clear that frequency of the category
instances had different effects on free and cued recall and
priming. Consistent with earlier findings (Bousfield et al.,
1958; Cofer et al., 1966; Horton & Cofer, 1975), presentation
of high-frequency instances resulted in higher recall than
presentation of low-frequency instances. In contrast, categoryinstance frequency did not seem to affect priming in category
production.
The dissociation between priming and cued recall as a
function of category-instance frequency meets the retrieval
intentionality criterion proposed by Schacter et al. (1989) as
a means of ruling out the role of explicit retrieval in implicit
memory tests. Organization had parallel effects on category
production and cued recall, whereas within the same experiment category-instance frequency had different effects on
these two tests, indicating that subjects are not treating the
implicit test like an explicit test. The dissociation between
category production and cued recall provides compelling evidence that the parallel effects of organization on these two
tests cannot be attributed to the use of explicit retrieval
strategies in category production.
Experiment 3
The purpose of this experiment was to examine the effects
of organization on category production by using a different
manipulation of organization than the blocked/random manipulation used in the first two experiments. Organization
was varied by presenting a list of items belonging to taxonomic
categories in a random order and by instructing the subjects
to organize the items actively. It could be argued that blocked
presentation increases priming not because subjects actively
group the items on the basis of common properties but by
some other mechanism such as association by contiguity
(Postman, 1972). For example, adjacent presentation of the
items at study may automatically strengthen the associations
among the items and make it more likely for the items to be
produced adjacently at test. It is also possible that blocked
presentation of the items makes it easier to detect the category

names and strengthens the category-instance associations.

Thus, it might be the adjacent presentation of the items rather
than active grouping processes at study that benefits priming
in category production.
To show that the effect of organization is not limited to
that induced by list structure, and to rule out the association
by contiguity explanation, we manipulated organization by
instructing the subjects to organize the items rather than by
presenting the items in a blocked order. In two study conditions, subjects were presented a list of categorized items in a
random order. In one condition, before list presentation,
subjects were given the category names and were told that
learning these names may help improve their performance on
the subsequent memory test. In a second condition, subjects
were again given the category names before the presentation
of the study list but were also told that, while studying the
items, they should try to group the members of the different
categories in their minds. The category names were provided
in both conditions so that category-instance associations
would be strengthened in both cases. Hence, differences between the two groups could be attributed to the active process
of grouping the items at study rather than automatic strengthening of category-instance associations. It was expected that
subjects who were given organizational instructions would
have a higher level of priming than subjects who were not
given these instructions.
To compare the effect of instructions on priming with that
on an explicit memory test, we also tested two other groups
of subjects who received the same instructions but were given
a free-recall test.

Method
Subjects. The subjects were 48 undergraduates from the same
subject pool as in the other experiments.
Design and materials. The design was a 2 x 2 factorial with type
of instructions (organizational instructions and no instructions) and
test type (category production and free recall) as between-subjects
variables. Twelve subjects were tested in each condition. The stimulus
materials were the same as in Experiment 1, except that the items in
the study list were presented randomly.
Procedure. At study, subjects in the no-instructions condition
were informed that they would be presented with a list of words
belonging to six categories, and that learning the category names
might improve their performance on a later memory test. Category
names were read to subjects before list presentation. Subjects in the
organizational instructions condition were given the same instructions, but they were additionally told that, at study, they should try
to group the members of the different categories in their minds. All
other details of the study presentation were the same as in the previous
experiments.
Following study, subjects received either a category-production test
or a free-recall test. All details of these tests were identical to those
described in the previous experiments.

Results and Discussion

Table 3 shows the proportions of responses in the two test
conditions as a function of type of instructions. In the category-production condition, priming was higher for subjects
who received instructions to organize the categorized words

PRIMING AND ORGANIZATION

Table 3
Experiment 3: Proportions of Responses in Category
Production and Free Recall as a Function of Instructions
Measure
Category production
Old
New
Priming
Free recall
Old

Organizational
instructions

No
instructions

.34
.09
.25

.28
.12
.16

,41

.30

at study than for subjects who did not receive these instructions, F(\, 22) = 5.75, MSt = 0.009. Additional analyses of
the category-production data showed that priming occurred
in both the organizational instructions and no-instructions
conditions (both ts > 1.80). Analyses of the free-recall data
also showed that subjects who received instructions to organize at study had higher recall than those who did not, F(l,
22) - 7.78, MSe = 0.010. It appears that having subjects
actively organize the categorized words at study improved
performance in both category production and free recall. An
overall ANOVA with test type as a variable was consistent
with the separate ANOVAs. The interaction of instructions
and test type was not significant, F < 1.
As in the previous experiments, examination of the first
three items produced at test showed that subjects use different
strategies in category' production and recall. In category production, only 33% of the first three words produced at test
were target words from the study list, whereas in free recall
94% of the first three words recalled were target words.
Furthermore, there was no increase in the production of target
words from the first two (34%), to the middle two (32%), and
the last two (27%) categories, F{2, 44) = 1.19, MS, = 0.026,
for either type of instructional condition, (F < 1, for the
interaction of category position and type of instructions).
In short, it appears that instructions to organize items at
study improved both category-production and free-recall performance. These results also indicate that contiguous presentation of category instances at study was not necessary to
demonstrate an effect of organization on category production;
instructions to organize enhanced priming performance even
when the items were presented randomly. Similarly, the effect
of organization on category production could not be attributed to the detection of the category names and automatic
strengthening of category-in stance associations because these
processes were likely to occur in both instructional conditions.
Finally, the results of this experiment combined with those of
the first two experiments clearly show that organizational
activities, induced either by list structure or by instructions,
improved performance on category production and had similar effects on free recall.

Experiment 4
Several studies have reported experimental dissociations
between priming tests and explicit memory tests as a function
of delay. Priming is maintained over long retention intervals,

109

whereas performance on explicit tests declines rapidly during

these intervals (e.g., Hashtroudi et al, 1988; Tulving, Schacter, & Stark, 1982). The purpose of Experiment 4 was to
investigate the time course of category-production priming
following blocked and random presentations, and to compare
the time course of forgetting in this test to that in the explicit
memory tests of free and cued recall. Categorically related
words were presented in a blocked or a random order at study.
Performance was assessed by category-production and freeand cued-recall tests immediately, 45 min, or 24 hr after
study.
A second goal of this experiment was to examine whether
the effect of organization on priming is long lasting or whether
the advantage of blocked presentation appears only in an
immediate test. Studies of explicit memory tests have found
that the advantage of blocked presentation lasts for long
periods in free recall (Horton & Cofer, 1975). Moreover, there
is some evidence that the effect of organization on recognition
is particularly pronounced after a retention interval (Mandler,
1980; Mandler, Pearlstone, & Koopmans, 1969). Thus, we
attempted to explore whether organization improves priming
in category production after a delay interval.
Method
Subjects. The subjects were 288 students from the same subject
pool as in earlier experiments.
Design and materials. The design was a 2 x 3 x 3 factorial with
method of presentation (blocked and random), delay interval (0 min,
45 min, and 24 hr), and test type (category production, free recall,
and cued recall) as between-subjects variables. Sixteen subjects were
tested in each condition.
The stimulus materials were the same as those used in Experiments
1 and 3.
Procedure. AH aspects of the procedure were identical to Experiment 1 except that subjects were tested immediately, 45 min, or 24
hr after study. During the 45-min delay period, subjects stayed in an
adjoining waiting area where they read magazines or their own reading
materials. Subjects in the 24-hr delay condition were instructed to
return for testing 24 hr later.

Results and Discussion

Table 4 shows the proportions of responses in the three test
conditions as a function of method of presentation and delay.
The analyses of category production showed that performance
in this test declined over the 24-hr delay, F(2, 90) = 3.33,
MSe = 0.008. Newman-Keuls tests indicated that only the
difference between the immediate and 24-hr interval was
significant. Nevertheless, there was significant priming even
after the 24-hr delay, f(31 > = 7.96. There was also a main
effect of method of presentation, F{\, 90) = 9.11, and an
interaction of delay and method of presentation, F(2, 90) =
3.11. Simple effects analyses showed that blocked presentation
of the study words resulted in higher priming than random
presentation in the immediate test, /"(I, 90) = 14.97, MSe =
0.008, but not in the 45-min and 24-hr tests, both Fs < 1. It
appears that organization enhances category-production
priming but only when the priming test is given immediately.
Evidently, the effect of organization on category production
is short-lived.

110

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDI

Table 4
Experiment 4: Proportions of Responses in Category
Production, Free Recall, and Cued Recall as a Function of
Method of Presentation and Delay
Delay
Measure
Category production
Blocked
Old
New

Priming
Random
Old
New

Priming
Free recall
Blocked
Old

Omin

45 min

24 hr

.33
.10
.23

.25
.11
.14

.23
.10
.13

.22
.11
.11

.22
.11
.11

.20
.09
.11

.42

.33

.22

.34

.24

.18

.48

.33

.30

.30

.23

.20

Random
Old

Cued recall
Blocked
Old

Random
Old

Blocked presentation resulted in higher performance than

random presentation in both the free-recall, F{i, 90) = 11.36,
MS* = 0.010, and cued-recall, F(l, 90) = 23.72, MS, - 0.015,
tests. Similarly, there was a decline in performance over the
delay intervals for both free-recall, F(2, 90) = 25.91, MSC =
0.010, and cued-recall, F(2, 90) 11.20, MS* = 0.015, tests.
Yet there were some differences between category production
and the recall tests. Whereas in category production only the
difference between the 0-min and 24-hr delay was significant,
Newman-Keuls tests showed that in both free and cued recall
the difference between the 0-min and 45-min delay was also
significant. In addition, in free recall the difference between
the 45-min and 24-hr delay was significant. The forgetting
rate in the recall tests seems to be more rapid than in the
category-production test. Moreover, there was no interaction
of method of presentation and delay for free recall, F < 1, or
for cued-recall, F(2, 90) = 1.24, MSC = 0.015. Method of
presentation had the same effect at all delay intervals.
In this experiment, the results of an overall 2 x 3 x 3
ANOVA with method of presentation, delay, and test type as
variables were not entirely consistent with the separate analyses. One difference was that in the overall analysis the
interaction of delay and type of test was significant, F{4, 270)
= 3.24, MSC = 0.011, indicating that whereas free recall, F(2,
270) = 22.66, MS* - 0.011, and cued recall, F(2, 270) =
15.40, MSC - 0.011, declined over the 24-hr interval there
was only a marginally significant decline in category-production priming over this interval, F(2, 270) = 2.51, MSe =
0.011, p < .08. Nevertheless, the marginally significant effect
of delay on category production in the overall analysis was
consistent with the separate analyses in showing that there
was a gradual decline in category production, even though
the decline was smaller in this test than in free and cued
recall. A second difference between the separate analyses and

the overall analysis was that in contrast to the separate analyses, the three-way interaction of method of presentation,
delay, and test type was not significant, F< 1. As mentioned
earlier, because of the scaling differences between category
production and recall tests, the separate analyses are preferable.
One explanation for the short-lived effect of organization
on category production is that subjects use explicit retrieval
in the immediate test, but do not use this strategy with longer
retention intervals when the study items are less accessible.
However, if this were the case, the probability of producing
items from the study list would be greater in the immediate
than in the delayed tests. In fact, the percentage of the first
three items at test that were from the study list did not differ
across the retention interval (29%, 21%, and 29%, for immediate, 45-min delay, and 24-hr delay, respectively), F < 1,
suggesting that subjects do not use different strategies in the
immediate and delayed category-product ion tests.
As in the first three experiments, there was evidence that
subjects in category production did not use explicit retrieval.
Of the first three items produced in the category-production
test, collapsed across delay, only 269c were from the study
list. In contrast, 94% and 83% of the first three items in free
recall and cued recall, respectively, were from the study list.
Similarly, as in the other experiments, there was no evidence
that production of targets from the study list increased for
either the random or blocked presentation when subjects
"caught on" to the goal of the test. The percentage of target
words produced from the study list was 27%, 24%, and 22%
for the first two, the middle two, and the last two categories
at test, respectively. This difference was significant, F(2. 188)
= 3.92, MSt 0.019, but contrary' to expectations, NewmanKeuls tests showed that production of targets was greater in
the first two than in the last two categories at test. The
interaction of category position and method of presentation
was not significant, F{2, 188) - 1.95, MS, = 0.019.
In addition to the item analyses, the dissociation between
category production and cued recall as a function of delay
provided evidence that category-production performance was
not mediated by explicit retrieval. Following the logic of the
retrieval intcntionality criterion (Schacter et al, 1989), the
different time course of forgetting in category production and
cued recall and the short-lived effect of organization on category production compared with its long-lasting effect on cued
recall suggest that subjects do not treat category production
like cued recall.
Overall, the results of Experiment 4 showed that, as in the
previous three experiments, priming in category production
was increased by organization. However, the separate analyses
suggested that the effects of organization did not last over the
delay interval. Apparently, the enhancement of category production by conceptually driven processing is short-lived. Freeand cued-recall performance was also improved by organization but, as in other experiments (Horton & Cofer, 1975;
Mandler et al., 1969), organization improved performance
even after a delay interval.
The results of the present experiment also showed that
priming in category production declined over time, although
significant priming occurred even after a 24-hr delay. Thus,

111

PRIMING AND ORGANIZATION

in terms of duration of priming, category production seems
to be similar to other priming tests. Except for word-stem
completion (Graf & Mandler, 1984; Graf, Squire, & Mandler,
1984) and word-association tests (Shimamura & Squire,
1984), priming effects in most tests persist over days (Jacoby,
1983a) or months (Sloman, Hayman, Ohta, Law, & Tulving,
1988), even though there is a gradual decline in priming over
time (see Richard so n-KJavehn & Bjork, 1988, for a review).

Experiment 5
In this experiment, we compared the effect of organization
on category production to its effect on the word-identification
priming test. The first four experiments clearly established
that category production is a conceptually driven test, as it
benefited from organization. It was expected, therefore, that
performance on this test would be dissociated from performance on a data-driven priming test such as word identification
as a function of organization. Word identification is considered to be data driven because performance on this test does
not benefit from manipulations that vary conceptual or elaborative processing such as levels of processing or generation
(Jacoby, 1983b; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). In addition, word
identification is sensitive to changes in perceptual aspects of
information such as changes in modality of presentation
between study and test and, as such, can be classified as data
driven (Clarke & Morton, 1983; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981;
Kirsner, Milech, & Standen, 1983). It appears that, in contrast
to category production, word identification should not be
affected by organization.

Method
Subjects. Sixty-four subjects from the same subject pool as in the
earlier experiments participated in this study.
Design and materials. The design was a 2 x 2 factorial with
method of presentation (blocked and random) and test type (category
production and word identification) as between-subjects variables.
Sixteen subjects were tested in each condition.
The stimulus materials were selected from the Battig and Montague
(1969) norms according to the procedures described in Experiment
1, except that because the present experiment included word identification, we chose only words that were four to six letters long. This
experiment also differed from Experiment 1 in that 16 categories (a
bird, a piece of furniture, a sport, a kitchen utensil, a tree, a fourfooted animal, a part of the human body, a musical instrument, an
article of clothing, a weapon, a dance, a color, a substance for flavoring
food, an insect, a fish, a part of a building) were used instead of 12.
In addition, seven common instances instead of six (e.g., turkey,
raven, pigeon, dove, wren, parrot, lark) were selected. The average
rank of the selected category members was 23.29 (range: 11-48).
Eight ofthe 16 categories were assigned to one list and 8 to another,
resulting in two lists of 56 items each (8 categories of 7 items each).
Across subjects, both lists served equally often as the study list and
the new list. The two lists were matched in category potency (List 1,
M = 7.97; List 2, M = 7.84) and category rank (List 1, M = 23.10;
List 2, M = 23.48). The test list for the word-identification test was
randomly ordered with the restriction that no two words from the
same category could occur adjacently.
All study words were typed in uppercase letters in the center of 3
x 5 in. index cards. The word-identification test was presented with

a tachistoscope (Gerbrands Model 233T). The test words were also

presented in uppercase letters.
Procedure. The instructions and duration of word presentation
were the same as in the previous experiments except that, at study,
words were presented on cards.
At test, subjects in the word-identification condition were presented
56 study words and 56 new words from the categories that had not
been presented to that subject at study. Subjects were told that a
number of words would be presented using a tachistoscope, and that
they were to identify each word immediately after its presentation.
Before presentation ofthe main test list, two blocks of practice words
were presented to each subject. The first block consisted of 10 words,
and the second block consisted of 20 words. The purpose of the first
block was to train the subjects in the identification procedure. The
training began by presenting the first ofthe 10 words for 135 ms. The
duration of each succeeding word was decreased by 10 ms so that the
last word appeared for 45 ms (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). The second
practice block involved presenting 20 additional words at the rate of
35 ms. Subjects' responses were recorded, and if their performance
was between 30% and 70% correct, then the presentation rate on the
main test list remained at 35 ms. If the performance was below 30%
or above 70% correct, then the presentation rate on the main test list
was increased to 43 ms or decreased to 27 ms, respectively (Schwartz,
1989). Presentation of each word was followed by a mask (a series of
ampersands) for 2 s.
Subjects in the category-production condition were presented the
16 category titles randomly one at a time. Subjects were asked to
produce nine examples of each category title as fast as they could. All
other aspects of the category-production test were identical to those
described in the previous experiments.

Results and Discussion

Table 5 shows the proportions of responses as a function of
method of presentation in the two test conditions. In category
production, priming was higher with blocked than with random presentation, F(l, 30) = 6.94, MSS = 0.006. In contrast,
in word identification, there was no difference in priming
between blocked and random presentations, F < 1. In both
tests, however, priming was significant with both blocked and
random presentations (all fs > 1.75). The results ofthe separate analyses were confirmed by a 2 x 2 ANOVA with method
of presentation and test type as variables. The interaction of
these variables was significant, f(l, 60) = 5.74, MSC - 0.001,
indicating that organization had different effects on category
production and word identification.

Table 5
Experiment 5: Proportions of Responses in Category
Production and Word Identification as a Function of Method
oj Presentation
Method of presentation
Measure
Category production
Old
New
Priming
Word identification
Old
New
Priming

Blocked

Random

.28
.09
.19

.23
.11
.12

.47
.28
.19

.55
.34
.21

112

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDT

The differential sensitivity of category production and word

identification to organization is consistent with the transferappropriate processing framework (Roediger, Weldon. &
Chain's, 1989). Relational processing of items at study, induced by blocked presentation, improves performance on the
conceptually driven category-production test, which depends
on interitem relationships. However, relational processing
does not facilitate performance on the data-driven wordidentification test, which involves processing of individual
items.
The differential effects of organization on category production and word identification suggest that dissociations as a
function of elaboration and organization occur not only between priming tests and explicit memory tests but also between two different types of priming tests. As mentioned
earlier, dissociations between two priming tests as a function
of generation versus reading and levels of processing manipulations have been reported by others (Blaxton, 1989; Roediger, Srinivas, & Weldon, 1989; Schwartz, 1989; Srinivas &
Roediger, 1990).

General Discussion
The results of the present series of experiments clearly
indicate that organization improved performance on category-production and recall tests. The results of Experiment 1
showed that, as with free and cued recall, blocked presentation
relative to random presentation increased priming in category
production. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this finding was
reliable and was obtained with both high-frequency and lowfrequency instances of categories. In Experiment 3, it was
found that varying organization by instructions, rather than
by method of presentation, also had similar effects on priming
and free recall; performance improved in both cases. Finally,
the results of Experiment 5 showed that the effect of organization on priming was limited to the conceptually driven
category-production test and was not observed with the datadriven word-identification test.
Although these results indicate that the category-production
test and recall tests are similar, other aspects of the data
suggest certain differences between the two types of tests. For
example, in Experiment 2, free and cued recall were higher
for high-frequency than for low-frequency instances of categories, whereas there wras no significant difference between
the two types of instances in category-production priming.
Thus, in terms of category-instance frequency, performance
on category production was dissociated from performance on
free and cued recall.
In addition, in Experiment 4, the effect of method of
presentation on priming in category production was evident
only when subjects were tested immediately. In contrast, in
free and cued recall, the effect of organization was long lasting.
Furthermore, the results of this experiment showed that the
time course of forgetting in category production was different
from free and cued recall. The rate of forgetting seemed to be
slower in the category-production test than in the recall tests.
Taken together, these differences suggest that somewhat different processes may be involved in the two types of tests.

The dissociations between category production and cued

recall as a function of category-instance frequency and delay
indicate that the effect of organization on category production
is not mediated by explicit retrieval. These dissociations satisfy
the retrieval intentionality criterion proposed by Schacter et
al. (1989) as an empirical means of ruling out explicit retrieval
in an implicit memory test. According to this criterion, the
dissociations between the two tests rule out the possibility that
the parallel effects of organization on category production
and cued recall occur because subjects treat category production as an explicit memory1 test. In category production,
subjects do not simply recall the items from the study list but,
in accordance with test instructions, they produce the first
items that come to mind.
Several other lines of evidence also support the conclusion
that subjects do not use explicit retrieval strategies in category
production. First, in all experiments, only a small percentage
(range: 26-35%) of the first three words produced in category
production were from the study list, whereas a large percentage (range: 83-97%) of the first three words in free and cued
recall were from the study list. Second, examination of Tables
1 to 5 shows that the level of performance was usually higher
in free and cued recall than in category production, indicating
that subjects are not engaging in the same strategy in the two
types of tests. Third, there seems to be no incentive for the
subjects in our experiments to engage in explicit retrieval in
category production. It is much easier to generate category
instances than to try and recall the previously presented items.
It seems reasonable to argue that when faced with a choice,
subjects arc more likely to adopt the strategy that requires less
effort (T. A. Blaxlon, personal communication, February
1990). Consistent with this suggestion, we found that the
items were produced very rapidly in category production,
whereas in free and cued recall the items were recalled more
slowly and deliberately. Finally, research with amnesic patients has shown that category-production performance is
intact in these patients (Gardner etaJ., 1973; Graf etal., 1985;
Hamann, 1989). Moreover, a recent study (Hamann. 1989)
has demonstrated that levels of processing manipulations
enhance category-production performance in these subjects.
Because explicit retrieval is severely impaired in amnesic
patients, these results suggest that category-production performance and its enhancement by conceptually driven processing docs not require explicit retrieval.
There arc no studies to date that have used a list of categorized items to examine the effect of organization on priming
and explicit memory tests. In a recent study, however, Graf
and Schacter (1989) used a list of unrelated word pairs (e.g.,
book-forest) to compare the effect of organization on priming
and explicit memory tests. Graf and Schacter distinguished
between unitization and grouping. Unitization is defined as
the process of representing separate items as a single unit, and
grouping is defined as the process of forming associations
among separate items on the basis of common properties.
Thus, the definition of grouping used by Graf and Schacter
seems to be similar to our definition of organization in this
article.
Graf and Schacter (1989) demonstrated that unitization
(e.g., generating a different unrelated sentence for each word

13

PRIMING AND ORGANIZATION

pair in the list) facilitated performance on both the stemcompletion priming test and the explicit cued-recall test.
Grouping (e.g., generating related sentences for word pairs to
form a story), on the other hand, enhanced performance on
the cued-recall test but not on the stem-completion test. The
latter finding seems to be inconsistent with our results that
organization improved priming in category production.
There are, however, a number of differences between the
two studies. One difference is that Graf and Schacter (1989)
compared the effect of grouping on memory for newly acquired associations rather than on memory for items that
have a preexisting representation, such as the words used in
the present experiments. In addition, grouping processes in
Graf and Schacter's experiment required forming new interitem relationships fa story) among word pairs that were unrelated to each other, whereas grouping in our study involved
using already existing interitcm relationships among categorized words. Finally, compared with the category-production
test used in our study, the stem-completion test used by Graf
and Schacter emphasizes processing of individual word pairs
rather than processing of relational information among word
pairs. Therefore, the relational information acquired by
grouping the items at study may not affect performance on
the stem-completion test. These differences may have contributed to the discrepant findings of the effects of grouping on
priming tests in the two studies.
In general, the results of the present experiments arc consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing account of the
differences between implicit and explicit tests (Roediger &
Blaxton, 1987b; Roediger, Weldon, & Chain's, 1989). This
framework focuses less on the type of memory test (implicit
vs. explicit) than on the match of mental operations performed at study and test. In this view, performance will benefit
to the extent that operations involved in the test match those
used during study. Conceptually driven processing at study
benefits performance on both implicit and explicit tests that
rely on conceptually driven processing. Thus, in the present
experiments, organization had parallel effects on the implicit
test of category production and the explicit tests of free and
cued recall because all of these tests rely on conceptually
driven processing. In addition, our results demonstrate that
conceptually driven processing at study had different effects
on two implicit tests when one test was data driven and the
other was conceptually driven. Organization increased priming in the conceptually driven category-production test but
not in the data-driven word-identification test.
Nevertheless, there are certain findings in the present experiments that cannot be readily accommodated within the
transfer-appropriate processing framework (Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989). For example, the framework does not
predict or explain why variables other than those involving
the manipulation of data-driven and conceptually driven
processing have different effects on implicit and explicit tests.
Hence, it is not clear how the framework can account for the
differential effect of category-instance frequency on category
production and recall or the short-lived effect of organization
on category production. Likewise, the framework has not
addressed the issue of the differences in the time course of
forgetting for implicit and explicit tests and, therefore, does

not explain the differences in forgetting rales between category

production and recall. The transfer-appropriate processing
framework has clearly established that performance on implicit and explicit tests is determined by interactions of processes required at encoding and test. It now needs to be
extended to account for the effects of a broader range of
variables such as retention interval on priming and explicit
memory' tests.
In short, the present series of experiments have demonstrated certain similarities between implicit and explicit tests.
We have also shown dissociations between two implicit tests.
Although there are some differences between implicit and
explicit tests that cannot be explained using the transferappropriate processing framework, by focusing on the similarities rather than differences between the implicit and explicit tests, the framework provides a useful approach for
understanding the relations between the two types of tests.

References
Battig, W. F., & Montague, W. E. (1969). Category norms for verbal
items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut category norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph, #0(3,"PL 2).

Blaxton, T. A. (1989). Investigating dissociations among memory

measures: Support for a transfer-appropriate processing framework.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 657-668.
Bousfield, W. A. (1953). The occurrence of clustering in the recall of
randomly arranged associates. The Journal of General Psychology,
49, 229-240.
Bousfield, W. A., Cohen, B. H., & Whitmarsh, G. A. (1958). Associative clustering in the recall of words of different taxonomic frequencies of occurrence. Psychological Reports, 4, 39-44.
Bower, G. H., Clark, M. C, Lesgold, A. M., & Winzenz, D. (1969).
Hierarchical retrieval schemes in recall of categorized word lists.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 323-343.
Clarke, R., & Morton, J. (1983). Cross modality facilitation in tachistoscopic word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 35A, 79-96.
Cofer, C. N., Bruce, D. R., & Reicher, G. M. (1966). Clustering in
free recall as a function of certain methodological variations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71, 858-866.
Cohen, N. J., & Squire, L. R. (1980). Preserved learning and retention
of pattern-analyzing skill in amnesia: Dissociation of knowing how
and knowing thai. Science, 210, 207-210.
Dallett, K. M. (1964). Number of categories and category information
in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 1-12.
Gardner, H., Boiler, F., Moreines, J., & Butters, N. (1973). Retrieving
information from Korsakoff patients: Effects of categorical cues
and reference to the task. Cortex, 9, 165-175.
Graf, P., & Mandler, G. (1984). Activation makes words more
accessible, but not necessarily more retrievable. Journal of Verbal
Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 553-568.
Graf, P., & Schacter, D. L. (1985). Implicit and explicit memory for
new associations in normal and amnesic subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning. Memory, and Cognition. 11,
501-518.
Graf, P., &. Schacter, D.L. (1989). Unitization and grouping mediate
dissociations in memory for new associations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 930940.

14

VIRGINIA A. RAPPOLD AND SHAHIN HASHTROUDI

Graf, P., Shimamura, A. P., 8L Squire, L. R. (1985). Priming across

modalities and priming across category levels: Extending ihe domain of preserved function in amnesia. Journal of Experimental
Psychology; Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 386-396.
Graf, P., Squire, L. R., &. Mandler, G. (1984). The information that
amnesic patients do not forget. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 164-178.
Hamann, S. (1989). Levels of processing effects in conceptually driven
implicit tests. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Toronto.
Hashtroudi, S., Ferguson, S. A., Rappold, V. A., & Chrosniak, L. D.
(1988). Data-driven and conceptually driven processes in partialword identification and recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 749-757.
Horton, D. L., & Cofer, C. N, (1975). Free recall of categorically
related list items over long retention intervals. Bulletin of the
Psychonomic Society, 5, 127-129.
Hunt, R. R.. & Einstein, G. O. (1981). Relational and item-specific
information in memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 20, 497-514.
Jacoby, L. L. (1983a). Perceptual enhancement: Persistent effects of
an experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 9, 21-38.
Jacoby, L. L. (1983b). Remembering the data: Analyzing interactive
processes in reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 485-508.
Jacoby, L. L., & Dallas, M. (1981). On the relationship between
autobiographical memory and perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 306-340.
Jenkins, J. J., Mink, W. D., & Russell, W. A. (1958). Associative
clustering as a function of verbal association strength. Psychological
Reports, 4, 127-136.
Johnson, M. K. (1983). A multiple-entry, modular memory system.
In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation:
Advances in research and theory (Vol. 17, pp. 81 -123). San Diego,
CA: Academic Press.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1980). Posthypnotic amnesia for recently learned
material: Interactions with "episodic" and ""semantic" memory.
Cognitive Psychology, 12, 227-251.
Kirsner, K., Milech, D., & Standen. P. (1983). Common and modality-specific processes in the mental lexicon. Memory & Cognition,
77,621-630.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252-271.
Mandler, G., Pearlstone, Z., & Koopmans, H. S. (1969). Effects of
organization and semantic similarity on recall and recognition.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 410-423.
Postman, L. (1972). A pragmatic view of organization theory. In E.
Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 3 48). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Richardson-Klavehn, A., & Bjork, R. A. (1988). Measures of memory.
Annual Review of Psychology, 39, 475-543.
Roediger, H. L., Ill, & Blaxton, T. A. (1987a). Effects of varying
modality, surface features, and retention interval in priming in
word-fragment completion. Memory & Cognition, 15, 379-388.
Roediger, H. L., Ill, & Blaxton, T. A. (1987b). Retrieval modes

produce dissociations in memory for surface information. In D. S.

Gorfein & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), Memory and cognitive processes:
The Ebbinghaus centennial conference (pp. 349-379). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Roediger, H. L., Ill, Srinivas, K., & Weldon, M. S. (1989). Dissociations between implicit measures of retention. In S. Lewandowsky,
J. C. Dunn, & K. Kirsner (Eds.), Implicit memory: Theoretical
issues (pp. 67-84). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Roediger, H. L., Ill, Weldon, M. S., & Challis, B. H. (1989). Explaining dissociations between implicit and explicit measures of retention: A processing account. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik
(Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honor of
Endel Tulving (pp. 3-41). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schacter, D. L. (1987). Implicit memory: History and current status.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 501-518.
Schacter, D. L, Bowers, J., & Booker, J. (1989). Intention, awareness,
and implicit memory: The retrieval intentionality criterion. In S.
Lewandowsky, J. C. Dunn, & K. Kirsner (Eds.), Implicit memory:
Theoretical issues (pp. 47-65). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schwartz, B. L. (1989). Effects of generation on indirect measures of
memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 15. 1119-1128.
Shimamura, A. P., & Squire, L. R. (1984). Paired-associate learning
and priming effects in amnesia: A neuropsychological study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 556-570.
Sloman, S. A., Hayman, C. A. G., Ohta, N., Law, J., & Tulving, E.
(3988). Forgetting in primed fragment completion. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14,
223-239.
Srinivas, K., & Roediger, H. L., III. (1990). Classifying implicit
memory tests: Category association and anagram solution. Journal
of Memory and Language, 29, 389-412.
Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory- Oxford, England:
Clarendon Press.
Tulving, E. (1985). How many memory systems are there? American
Psychologist, 40, 385-398.
Tulving, E., & Donaldson, W. (1972). Organization of memory. San
Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Tulving, E., & Pearlstone, Z. (1966). Availability versus accessibility
of information in memory for words. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behavior, 5, 381-391.
Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L., & Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects
in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 8, 336-342.
Warrington. E. K., & Weiskrantz, L. (1982). Amnesia: A disconnection syndrome? Neuropsychologia, 20, 233-248.
Wood, G. (1967). Category names as cues for the recall of category
instances. Psychonomic Science, 9, 323-324.

Received February 12, 1990

Revision received May 25, 1990
Accepted May 29, 1990