Recent findings suggest that the immediate free recall (IFR) of short lists is similar to
immediate serial recall (ISR). These findings were obtained using a methodology in which
participants did not know the list length in advance of each list, and this uncertainty may
have encouraged participants to adopt atypical recall strategies. Therefore, we examined
whether prior knowledge of the list length was important in obtaining these recent findings
with IFR (Experiment 1) and ISR (Experiment 2). In both experiments, we presented
participants with lists of between 1 and 15 words and found that advance knowledge of
the list length resulted in little or no difference in recall performance. In our final experiment
(Experiment 3), we manipulated test expectancy. We found that participants who
were post-cued to recall using either IFR or ISR recalled in similar ways to those who were
pre-cued to recall using IFR or ISR, respectively. We argue that lists of words are encoded in
similar ways on the two tasks, that the list length and task instructions determine the initial
output order, and that the initial recall and the instructions determine the resultant
serial position curves.