Abstract

Keenan, Baillet, & Brown(1984) and Myers, Shinjo, & Duffy(1987) found that, when the degree of causal relatedness between a pair of sentences was varied, the probability of recall of a sentence, given the other sentence as a recall cue, was the highest at the intermediate level of causal relatedness. This inverted-U pattern of recall was interpreted as due to the elaboration which are assumed to occur during the reading of the sentences with the intermediate level of relatedness. On the other hand, Kim(1998) suggested that the predictability, that is, the degree of how easily the event of the first sentence predicts the event of the second sentence, affects the recallability. When the subjects were asked to recall the fast sentence given the second sentence as a recall cue, they could recall better in the low predictability, high causal relatedness condition. In this study, the subjects recalled the second sentence given the first sentence as a recall cue. The effect of predictability was reversed in the high causal relatedness condition: Higher recall rate in the high predictability than in the low predictability was found. It was concluded that there are no advantages in recall due to the elaboration. The effects of predictability were interpreted as due to the differences between forward and backward integration during the encoding.