Position Coding Functions in Serial Recall
There is a great deal of evidence supporting the view that the memory function codes for the position of items on a list. For instance, if a series of letters, say BXRDGVTNF, is divided into subgroups, for example BXR DGV TNF, then immediate recall improves overall, but one kind of error increases. The error is this: as described above, items in the same position, in different subgroups, tend to swap places. Thus, the series above might be recalled as BGR DXV TNF (Henson, 1998; Ryan, 1969a, 1969b). What seems to be happening is shown in Fig. 3.3.