The Role of Mental Contiguity in Memory: Registration and Retrieval Effects

Implicit contiguity of related items whose list presentations are physically disparate results from the subject looking back through memory so as to bring the items together in mental experience. Effects of implicit contiguity were examined in three experiments by controlling looking-back behavior during list presentation and varying the separation of target items and related items that were later provided as recall cues. The effectiveness of semantic cues was enhanced by their implicit contiguity with target items during study. However, Experiment III showed that the effectiveness of acoustically related cues was uninfluenced by either physical or implicit contiguity. Experiment III also revealed that finding faster "decay" of acoustic than semantic information is dependent upon retention test arrangements.