Semantic and acoustic information in primary memory

Although it is widely believed that verbal items are coded in primary memory (PM) in an acoustic or articulatory fashion, there is some evidence to indicate that PM may be a flexible system using the most salient characteristics of stored items. The possibility that semantic-associative attributes could facilitate free recall from PM was explored with 85 undergraduates. Clusters of 6 words, related either acoustically or semantically, were …