Enhancing the comparability between part-list cueing and collaborative recall

Abstract

The effects of part-list cueing and of collaborative recall in memory performance have been recently addressed as parallel phenomena. Notably they both impair recall (and boost frequency estimates) and they have been explained by the same underlying mechanisms. However the comparability between the two paradigms is hindered by a number of procedural differences. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of a new paradigm that makes standard part-list cueing and collaborative recall more comparable. In our study we compared free recall and frequency estimates of participants in a non-cueing condition with the same performance in a standard partlist cueing condition and in a condition in which part-list cues were gradually presented during recall (as it occurs in collaborative recall). Results indicate that the effects of part-list cueing continued to be reliable in both cueing conditions. Namely, recall was impaired and frequency estimates were boosted relatively to a non-cueing condition. The results obtained with this new method that enhances the direct comparability of the two paradigms, provides further evidence for the parallel between the two effects.