Recognition of the Stimulus Suffix

Recall of the final items in a spoken list is hindered by the presentation of a to-be-ignored item. The magnitude of this interference (the stimulus suffix effect) is reduced if the suffix is perceptually distinct from the other list items. Several experiments examine this effect of perceptual distinctiveness. The experiments involve later recognition of stimulus suffixes from lists presented for serial recall. Suffixes which differ from the list items tend to be recognized at least as well as list-similar sufftxes. This supports the view that reduction of the suffix effect can be traced to decreased interitem interference in memory rather than to attentional selection.