Memory for redundant information.

Ss learned a paragraph consisting of two four-term linear orderings. Such an ordering is comprised of six pairwise relations, three of which (the adjacent pairs) are essential to the establishment of the ordering and three of which (the remote pairs) are redundant. For one of the orderings only the three Adjacent pairs were presented, for the other all six pairs were presented. Previous work indicated that, when Ss are asked to determine whether a test sentence is true (consistent with the ordering) or false (inconsistent with the ordering), proportion correct is higher on the remote pairs than on the adjacent pairs. The present experiment examined Ss' ability to determine whether a particular test sentence had actually been presented. For false sentences the above effect was replicated; for true sentences the effect was reversed. This result supports the argument that Ss store "semantic descriptions" rather than individual sentences.