Abstract
The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of between-item elaboration on incidental memory of words. Between-item elaboration refers to the encoding of relational information to each target item. Forty-four college students were asked to generate free associates to each target in the orienting task which was followed by unexpected recognition and recall tests. Triplets of targets which was known to elicit a converging associate were used. Targets of such a triplet were presented in massed or spaced fashion. Frequency of converging associates generated in the orienting task (free association) was used as an index of between-item elaboration. The proportion of targets correctly recalled for which the converging associates were generated was higher than that of the opposite cases. The above result suggested that the between-item elaboration was effective in retrieval of targets. No effect of types of presentation on free recall performance was observed.
