Congruency Effects in Part-List Cuing Inhibition

In demonstrations of part-list cuing inhibition, Ss who are shown a subset of studied list words recall fewer noncue words than Ss not shown such part-list cues. S. A. Sloman et al propose that part-list inhibition is governed in part by an incongruency principle: Inhibition occurs to the extent that part-list cues induce a retrieval framework different from that used to encode list items. In Exp 1, word lists were studied followed by a test of free recall either without cues, or with cue words serially organized to be either congruent or incongruent with the order of studied items. In Exps 2–4, cues consisted of every 2nd study item in the original presentation order (congruent ones) or reordered to form famous names or familiar idioms that had been hidden in the study list (incongruent cues). More part-list inhibition was observed with incongruent cues than congruent cues in all 4 experiments