An unsuccessful attempt to replicate Spence's experiment on the restricting effects of awareness

Conscious and preconscious influences on recall: a reassessment and extension

In an attempt to replicate the Spence (1964) finding that primary recall hinders the recall of primary associates, an experiment controlling for serial position and associative clustering effects was performed. Results were obtained which indicate facilitation rather than restriction of associate recall after primary recall. Spence-type results were obtained, however, with Ss whose scores were above the sample mean on the Extraversion scale of the Maudsley Personality Inventory. In addition, hypotheses based on Eysenck's theories concerning introversion-extraversion and anxiety were tested as to their efficacy in predicting the amount and pattern of primary associate (associates to the primary of a word list) and control word associate (associates related to a primary which does not appear in the word list) recall. As predicted, extraversion correlated with the degree to which S alternated between primary associates and control associates during recall. Anxiety was not related to any of the experimental measures.