Cued recall and free recall as a function of the number of items per cue

Tested the generality of M. Earhard's findings that (a) the number of items/cue determines the rate of cued-recall learning, and (b) free-recall Ss perform as well as cued Ss under the conditions of 6 or 8 items/cue. Categorized materials consisting of English nouns were given to a total of 135 undergraduates in 2 free-recall and 7 cued-recall conditions. Differences were obtained between cued-recall Ss who had 6 or less and 8 or more items/cue. Free-recall Ss performed as well as 6.6 items/cue, which exactly replicates Earhard's result with alphabetized word lists. (French summary)