Hypermnesia: the role of multiple retrieval cues

We demonstrate that encoding multiple cues enhances hypermnesia. College students were presented with 36 (Experiment 1) or 60 (Experiments 2 and 3) sets of words and were asked to encode the sets under single- or multiple-cue conditions. In the single-cue conditions, each set consisted of a cue and a target. In the multiple-cue conditions, each set consisted of three cues and a target. Following the presentation of the word sets, the participants received either three cued recall tests (Experiments 1 and 2) or three free recall tests (Experiment 3). With this manipulation, we observed greater hypermnesia in the multiple-cue conditions than in the single-cue conditions. Furthermore, the greater hypermnesic recall resulted from increased reminiscence rather than reduced intertest forgetting. The present findings support the hypothesis that the availability of multiple retrieval cues plays an important role in hypermnesia.