Retrieval constraints on associative elaborations

This research investigated the role of associative elaborations on free- and cued-recall performance. Elaboration was manipulated by having subjects pronounce an associatively related word that could be integrated into an activated episodic trace following sentence-encoding operations on the target concept. In Experiments 1 and 2, free recall was facilitated when the word was related to the sentence context of the target encoding compared to when it was related only to the target, or both the target and the context. The target-related conditions did not differ from an unrelated control condition for positive response encodings. This same pattern held for cued recall when the sentence frame context was provided as the retrieval cue (Experiment 1). However, Experiment 2 showed that if the elaborating word was provided as a cue for the target, then recall was highest when it was related to both the target and its context or only to the target. The results are discussed in terms of retrieval constraints on associative elaborations.