Long-term retention: When incidental semantic processing fails

It has been demonstrated that instructions to learn have no effect on immediate recall in the incidental learning paradigm used by J. J. Jenkins (1974). Exp I, using 96 undergraduates, further investigated this finding by factorially manipulating recall instructions (incidental vs intentional learning), presentation rate of materials, retention interval, and type of orienting task. Results show that incidental semantic processing of information is sufficient for good retention of material in an immediate-recall test. However, after a 24-hr delay between presentation of a word list and recall, Ss who used intentional processing strategies recalled more words than did Ss who used only incidental processing. In Exp II, using 22 paid Ss, this difference was eliminated when conditions allowed Ss to cluster during recall. These findings suggest that intentional rehearsal strategies are quite effective for delayed recall and that incidental semantic processing alone is not sufficient for long-term retention of words when clustering is prevented. Several theories to account for the different patterns of results in immediate and delayed recall are discussed. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).