Effect of reutilization of retrieval cues on free recall of a text

Undergraduates, 20 women and 25 men, studied an expository text containing only isolated paragraphs. Each paragraph was accompanied by a potential retrieval cue. During the retention interval experimental subjects received a sentence-completion task or a new learning task in which half of these cues were used again. Processing of interpolated textual materials appeared generally to hamper access to the original text. Moreover, reutilization of cues appears to reduce their evocative power with respect to the original text.