RETROACTIVE INHIBITION IN FREE RECALL OF CATEGORIZED WORD LISTS
Toshiaki Mori · Japanese Psychological Research · 1975
Unlearning hypothesis and limited capacity hypothesis to explain RI in free recall were evaluated by varying the number and the size of categories of the lists in Experiment 1. The results indicated that RI in free recall is due to the limited capacity of human memory. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate whether RI reflects the limited capacity of storage or the limited capacity of retrieval of human memory, by providing category names as retrieval cues following the first total free recall test. Providing retrieval cues largely removed RI when the number of categories exceeded the capacity of memory. Considering these results, it was concluded that RI in free recall reflects the limited capacity of retrieval.