Serial and free recall: Common effects and common mechanisms? A reply to Murdock (2008).

Abstract

Does a single mechanism underpin serial and free recall? B. Murdock (2008) argued against the claim, embodied in the SIMPLE model of memory (G. D. A. Brown, I. Neath, & N. Chater, 2007), that data from serial and free recall can be accounted for within a unitary model. Here, the many similarities between serial and free recall are noted, and it is suggested that differences may result not from the use of different mechanisms but from task demands and the involvement of rehearsal processes. Rehearsal has not previously been accommodated by temporal distinctiveness models because of their simplifying assumption that items occupy point locations along a temporal dimension in memory. Here, it is suggested that use of representations that acknowledge items' temporal extension allows the scale-similar temporal distinctiveness approach to account for several additional phenomena that lie outside the scope of other models.