Encoding specificity and unidirectional associates in cued recall

The first of two experiments confirmed the earlier findings of Humphreys and Galbraith (1975), that under silent-study encoding instructions, words assessed as strong elicitors of target words are effective extralist retrieval cues, whereas words assessed as weak elicitors are not. In the second experiment, predictions from the encoding specificity principle were confirmed with respect to the effectiveness of forward and backward retrieval cues in recall. Contrary to the conclusions of Humphreys and Galbraith, forward and backward unidirectional associates were equally effective as retrieval cues, provided subjects engaged in associative encoding (generated associations to the target words) at storage.