Abstract

Three cued recall experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of the imagery of the input cues on the retrieval processes. In Experiment 1, imagery of the input cues, types of retrieval cues, and input word order were varied. In Experiment 2 and 3, presentation rates and retrieval time were additionally varied respectively. The results indicated that cued recall depends on the specific input conditions. Under the high imagery input cue condition, intralist cuing was superior to extralist cuing, whereas under the low imagery input cue condition, extralist cuing was superior to intralist cuing. Additionally controlled variables did not have any significant effects on this finding. The results generally support the encoding specificity theory, but it also shows some limits of the 'superiority of intra list cuing' assumption of this theory. The 'non-superiority of intralist cuing' and the tendency of faster and better recall under the low imagery input cue condition was interpreted as the result of the different nature of the encoding of the target words paired with high imagery input cues and that of the target words paired with low imagery input cue.