Order Information and Free Learning
Douglas K. Detterman, Lester C. Shine, John Moore · The American Journal of Psychology · 1974
Subjects asked to recall the 20 items and (not necessarily in) their order on a list took 34% fewer trials to learn the list to three perfect trials than did subjects who were asked just to recall the items. The free learners at first recalled more, but later fewer, items than the ordinal learners. The early ease of free learning is attributed to the use of preexperimental associations and mnemonic mediational devices, and the later superiority of ordinal learning to an efficient comparison of response set with stimulus set, a comparison that permits determination of which items are yet to be learned.