The stimulus suffix: A paradoxical effect

Two experiments are reported which showed that a stimulus suffix word, following eight words presented for immediate serial recall, affected recall performance differentially for the final list word: the target word. The observed difference depended on whether the target word and suffix were associated. It was concluded that both the target word and the redundant stimulus suffix were coded at the level of semantic coding as well as at the level of acoustic coding, and that an effect resulted where none had previously been found. There was no evidence to indicate that the coding of the semantic features required a switch in attention to the target word during the presentation of the list, and the coding for this was presumed to be autonomous. A model was described to explain the paradoxical effect of an associated stimulus suffix.