Sentence mediation and stimulus blocking in free recall.

In a two-phasing training study, EMR adolescents were initially provided with sentences linking each pair of 2 words in a 20-word list to be free recalled. In a second phase, subjects were required to create and verbalize their own sentences. This sentence-mediation condition was compared with (a) one in which items were presented in the same fixed pairs from trial-to-trial, but without sentences and (b) a group that received items in changing pairs. Results indicated superiority of both sentence-mediation and fixed-pairs treatments in comparison to the changing-pairs condition on both correct recall and subjective organization. Sentences did not facilitate recall more than did consistent ordering. The results were discussed in the context of the growing evidence that providing input structure can remediate organization deficits in retarded persons.