The Effect of Item and Relational Processing on Incidental Long-term Memory for Order

Although stimulus similarity and levels of processing are often manipulated in long-term episodic tasks that test item memory, little attention has been paid to how these variable affect long-term memory for temporal order. The effects of these variables on order memory was tested using a task that required the reconstruction of the initial presentation order of short lists after a filled delay. Initial learning of the lists always involved incidental processing procedures ranging from low-level item processes to high-level relational processes. In all experiments, changes in stimulus similarity and processing tasks had similar effects on order memory to the effects found in tasks involving long-term item memory. An interpretation of the data is proposed, based on the joint contribution of distinctive item and relation processing, and poor encoding of order information with shallow processing. It is concluded that item information must play a significant role in the long-term order reconstruction task.