Recall cued by selectively attended and unattended attributes

Three experiments were carried out to investigate the effects upon subsequent recall of categorizing a stimulus at presentation by one of its attributes. The results indicated that a previously reported finding of categorized cue superiority for integral stimuli in an incidental learning paradigm may not be a robust one. Two experiments employed either intentional or incidental learning paradigms. In both, attributes that had been categorized at presentation did not differ in effectiveness as subsequent recall cues from those that had not. In a third experiment, with incidental learning, categorized cues were less effective than uncategorized cues. Thus, observed effects of categorization appear to be sensitive to minor differences in experimental procedure between studies. © 1980 Psychonomic Society, Inc.