Integration versus nonintegration of noun pairs and verb pairs under enactment and nonenactment conditions

Summary Two paired-associate experiments examined conditions responsible for the free-to-cued-recall decrease phenomenon. Word class was controlled for by the use of pair elements, which could be treated alternatively as verbs and nouns. With this list material, the two experiments studied the effect of encoding conditions varying from standard, unspecified enactment instructions to enactment instructions enriched with context information. The results showed that the free-to-cued-recall decrease did not depend on motor performance, or on word class, but was much more pronounced for recency than for prerecency positions. The findings were discussed in terms of the difference between strategic and nonstrategic processing of memories of enacted information.