Cue-dependent effects in recall of categorized lists

Noncued and cued recall of categorized lists are similar in a number of ways: They show the same rate of gain in item recall with increasing category size; they both produce serial position effects within categories; and they both show a “some-or-none” pattern of with-category recall frequency. Cued and noncued recall differ in other respects: There is a great improvement in item and in category recall attendant on the provision of cues, and only noncued recall displays a list position effect. The points of similarity are taken to indicate that both cued and noncued recall measure the same underlying processes. The points of differences suggest the utility of cueing procedures in identifying the origin of characteristics of recall, according to the principle that any feature of noncued recall that is altered by provision of cues must originate in the retrieval process; features resistant to such modification represent encoding or storage effects.