抄録
An experiment was conducted to elucidate the processes producing the spacing effect in free recall. Five conditions were designed to have systematically different test-time availabilities of input-time local contexts which would play dominant roles at retrieval processes. The availabilities were manipulated through environmental contexts, such as date, place, experimenter, apparatus, and subsidiary counting task. Group IM was tested immediately after input session of list learning and the subsidiary task. The other groups were tested on the next day of the input session under the same environment with the task (Group CB), under the same environment without the task (Group NC), under the same place and experimenter (Group SP), under different place and experimenter (Group VC). Magnitudes of the spacing effect decreased with decreasing the compatibilities of the environmental contexts, finally under the Group VC no effects was obtained. The present results indicate that the spacing effect is produced by the retrieval processes which depend on associations between items and the local contexts and/or on those between items and the environmental contexts.
