Overt Elicitations of First-List Responses During Second-List Learning and Retroactive Inhibition

Retroactive inhibition was studied in the A-B, A-C paradigm as a function of the elicitation of first-list responses during second-list learning. Ninety-eight male and female introductory psychology students, naive to verbal learning research, served as Ss. An additional 10 were discarded due to criterion or procedural problems. Eighty-four of the 98 were in A-B, A-C conditions and 61 of these contributed 218 total elicitations, with 130 different responses occurring as elicitations. The elicitations were due to the use of learning instructions which encouraged guessing, and to the inherent similarity of response lists composed of single letters; CVC trigrams were the stimuli. Nonelicited first-list responses were inferior at recall to responses elicited twice or more, and to responses elicited at least once by their correct first-list stimuli. Characteristics of the elicitation process were also observed. These results opposed the elicitation hypothesis originated by Melton and Irwin, supporting a newer interpretation of elicitations by Petrich. Further discussion centered on possible questions that could be raised prior to a final interpretation of the data.