Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 1981 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

Human Learning and Memory 0096-1515/81 /0705-0386S00.75

1981, Vol. 7, No. 5, 386-392

Sentence Cuing and the Effectiveness of Bizarre Imagery

Keith A. Wollen and Steven D. Cox
Washington State University

Two experiments were conducted to determine why bizarre imagery facilitates

recall in some studies but not in others. In Experiment 1 images based on bizarre
sentences facilitated free recall more than images based on nonbizarre sentences.
The reverse was true for cued recall. Experiment 2 found evidence for a type of
intersentence cuing that is present in the bizarre conditions of some experiments
but is not present in the nonbizarre conditions. It was concluded that nonbizarre
images are better integrated and that cuing must be carefully evaluated in any
experiment concerned with the effect of bizarre imagery on recall.

There has been considerable controversy over Experiment 1

the types of images that will facilitate the asso-
ciation of words. It is generally agreed that images
must depict the to-be-associated words in some
form of interaction (e.g., Bower, 1970; Wollen,
Weber, & Lowry, 1972). However, whether bi-
zarre interacting images are any more effective
than nonbizarre interacting images is open to
question. Most research has either found no dif-
ference or a slight advantage for nonbizarre in-
teracting images (e.g., Nappe & Wollen, 1973;
Senter & Hoffman, 1976; Wollen et al., 1972;
Wood, 1967). Recently, however, several experi-
ments have appeared to support the notion that
bizarreness is effective (Merry, 1980; Merry &
Graham, 1978; Webber & Marshall, 1978). One
goal of the present research was to determine at
least some of the reasons for this apparent dis-
crepancy. Our research will focus on the studies
of Merry.
A major difference between most studies and
those conducted by Merry is the presence or ab-
sence of recall cues. In general, experiments not
finding bizarreness effective have used paired as-
sociates and have presented one member of each
pair as a cue for the recall of the other member
(e.g., Wollen et al., 1972; Wood, 1967). In con-
trast, experiments that found bizarreness effective
have usually presented sentences and used un-
cued, free recall of the entire sentence (e.g.,
Merry, 1980; Merry & Graham, 1978). Experi-
ment 1 is a replication of Merry's procedure, but
with an additional cued recall condition. By com-
paring cued and uncued conditions, it is possible
to determine whether the effect of bizarreness
depends on the absence of recall cues.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Keith A. Wol-
len, Department of Psychology, Washington State Uni-
versity, Pullman, Washington 99164.
386
Method
Design and subjects. A mixed design was used,
consisting of two levels of the between-subject fac-
tor (cued and free recall) and three levels of the
within-subject variable (bizarre, nonbizarre, and
abstract sentences). The subjects were introduc-
tory psychology students, whose participation par-
tially fulfilled a course requirement. A total of 35
subjects participated, of whom 3 misunderstood
the recall instructions, so their data were dis-
carded. The subjects were run in four small groups
that ranged in size from 8 to 14. As much as
possible the different conditions were balanced
with respect to position in the room.
Procedure. The materials were the 18 sen-
tences used by Merry and Graham (1978) except
the word headmaster was changed to judge to
make it more easily understood by our population.
The materials shown in Table 1 represent one list.
A second list was derived from the first by recom-
bining the subjects and predicates of the first 2
sentences (i.e., The hen pecked the worm; The
man smoked the cigar), the next 2 sentences (i.e.,
The doctor spoke on the telephone; The fish lived
in the pond), and so forth for the remaining pairs
of sentences. The abstract sentences were the
same for the two lists. Thus each list consisted of
6 bizarre, 6 nonbizarre, and 6 abstract sentences.
Each list was further arranged into two different
orders to reduce sequence effects. The orders were
random except for the restriction that in the ex-
perimenters' judgments, related sentences were
not adjacent in the series.
Following Merry's (1980) procedure, an inci-
dental learning task was used. The task involved
first forming a mental image of the events or re-
lationships described in each sentence and then
 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS
Table 1
Sentences Used in Experiment I
Sentence
Bizzare
The hen smoked the cigar.
The man pecked the worm.
The doctor lived in the pond.
The fish spoke on the telephone.
The judge climbed up the tree.
The monkey read the newspaper.
Nonbizarre
The policeman drove the car.
The horse ate the hay.
The soldier waved the flag.
The cat licked the kitten.
The teacher wrote on the blackboard.
The dog lived in the kennel.
Abstract
The promise caused hope.
The cost upset the plan.
The excuse surprised them.
The idea changed the rule.
The others knew nothing.
The answer pleased somebody.
rating that image with respect to the type of image
produced. The four rating categories were ordi-
nary (something that you might see in everyday
life), unlikely (ridiculous—something that you
would never really see), don't know (not sure
whether image is ordinary or unlikely), and can't
image. Descriptions of all four categories were
written on the blackboard at the front of the room.
Examples were: (a) The mouse ran across the
floor, which was described as ordinary, and (b)
The elephant played the guitar, which was de-
scribed as unlikely. The subjects were told that
there was no need to remember the sentences and
that the experiment was concerned with forming
and rating mental images.
The lists were presented by means of test book-
lets. Each booklet consisted of 18 pages; each page
had 1 sentence, below which appeared the four
rating choices. Every 8 sec, the experimenter said,
"Turn," which was the subjects' cue to turn the
page, try to form an image of the sentence, and
then rate that image. After all 18 sentences were
rated, the booklets were collected.
The second stage, a distractor task, began by
passing out a sheet containing a typewritten pas-
sage. The subjects were told that the task was a
measure of speed and accuracy. Subjects were
given 1 min to count the number of times the letter
e appeared in the passage. When the experimenter
387
indicated that the time was up, subjects marked
where they had stopped and entered the number
they had counted. Then the sheets were collected.
The third stage was the recall task. Recall
sheets were distributed, and the subjects were told
that they would be asked to recall the sentences.
Specific recall instructions were typed on the top
of the recall sheet. The instructions for free recall
asked subjects to write one sentence on each line
in whatever sequence they wanted. The instruc-
tions for cued recall asked subjects to read the
cues (which were the first two words of each sen-
tence, such as The man, The idea) and to complete
the sentence. The cues were in a different random
order from that used during input. The instruc-
tions for both free and cued recall emphasized
that the subjects should write whatever they could
remember, even if it was only one or two words.
Recall began after all subjects had read the in-
structions. The subjects had as much time as they
wanted for recall. The subjects were seated in
alternate seats to prevent them from seeing other
people's responses. When everyone was finished,
the subjects were asked if they had expected the
recall test—No one had.
Results
Sentence ratings. An examination of the rating
data shows that subjects usually agreed with our
grouping of sentences into nonbizarre, bizarre,
and abstract categories. Of 192 sentences we la-
beled as nonbizarre, 189 were rated the same by
the subjects. For the 192 bizarre sentences, 169
were rated unlikely. It is difficult to take at least
some of the other 23 responses seriously; for ex-
ample, calling The hen smoked the cigar ordinary
probably does not represent frequent encounters
with cigar smoking chickens! The 192 abstract
sentences were actually called can't image 84
times; the rest of the ratings were don't know and
ordinary.
Recall. The basic components of the sentences
consisted of noun-verb-noun (Ni, V, N2). In free
recall conditions it would be possible to count both
NI and N2 (as was done by Merry, 1980). In the
cued conditions, however, only the second noun
was recalled and hence only those nouns could be
counted. Consequently to make cued and free re-
call conditions comparable, only the second nouns
were considered in either condition. It should be
noted, however, that the results were nearly iden-
tical if both nouns in free recall were considered
and divided by two (to bring them to the same
scale as the cued conditions, which could only have
recalled half as many nouns). The mean number
of correct second nouns is shown in Figure 1 for
each condition.
388 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS
4-
Nonbizarre-
3-
c whether the unit consisted of a taxonomic cate-
o gory or a sentence.
CD
•Abstract
-t-
Absent Present
Recall Cue
Figure 1. Mean number of correct NI (second noun)
responses as a function of the type of sentence and the
presence of cues.
There was a significant Type of Recall X Type
of Sentence interaction, F(2, 60) = 9.09, A/SC =
1.07 (p < .05 for this and all subsequent tests).
For this reason simple effects were examined. In
the free recall condition, nouns from bizarre sen-
tences were recalled better than nouns from non-
bizarre sentences, t(60) = 2.56. This replicates
the findings of Merry (1980) and Merry and Gra-
ham (1978).
In cued recall, however, nouns from nonbizarre
sentences were recalled significantly better,
f(60) = 2.90. This latter result is basically con-
sistent with the data of others who used cued recall
and found either no difference or a slight supe-
riority in favor of nonbizarre imagery (e.g., Nappe
& Wollen, 1973; Senter & Hoffman, 1976; Wol-
len et al., 1972; Wood, 1967). Thus it appears
that a major variable determining the effective-
ness of bizarreness is whether cued or free recall
is used.
The Type of Recall X Bizarreness interaction
stems largely from the fact that the use of cues
seems to produce considerable facilitation for non-
bizarre sentences. The difference between the
cued and free recall means for nonbizarre sen-
tences was statistically significant, ?(30) = 5.87.
In contrast, the difference between cued and free
recall was not significant for bizarre sentences
( / < 1.00) or for abstract sentences (t = 1.98).
Thus cuing is particularly important for nonbi-
zarre materials.
Why should cuing have dif/erent effects for
different types of materials? Although cues are
known to decrease free recall of individual words
(e.g., Slamecka, 1968), cuing enhances recall
when a list is used that has several words from
each of several categories (e.g., Tulving & Pearl-
stone, 1966). A list of sentences can be viewed as
similar to a list having several categories. The
words of a sentence may represent a unit much
as the words in a category represent a unit. Con-
sequently, providing one word of a unit might be
expected to cue the other words in that unit,
This analysis assumes that the words of a sen-
tence indeed function as a unit. Such would be
the case primarily for sentences for which a single
integrated image can be formed. Inspection of
Table 1 shows that nonbizarre sentences appear
to be well integrated; for example, The dog lived
in the kennel seems better integrated than The
excuse suprised them. If true, one would expect
the addition of cues to have a greater effect for
nonbizarre sentences than for abstract ones, as
was in fact the case. This result is also consistent
with other findings that recall of an entire sentence
is higher for concrete sentences than for abstract
ones (Masson, 1979).
The comparison between nonbizarre and bi-
zarre sentences is also informative. In general the
bizarre sentences are not as well integrated as the
nonbizarre ones. As an illustration consider the
sentence The. fish spoke on the telephone. Fish do
not speak and are not associatively related to tele-
phone. Consequently one might not expect cuing
to have much effect for bizarre sentences, as was
in fact the case.
Conditional probabilities. The importance of
cuing is also emphasized by an internal analysis
of the recall data. Conditional probabilities were
calculated for the probability of recalling the sec-
ond noun of a sentence, given that the first noun
was recalled (N2:Ni); the probability that the verb
was recalled, given recall of the first noun (V:Ni);
the probability that the second noun was recalled,
given recall of the verb (N2:V); and the probability
that both the verb and the second noun were re-
called, given recall of the first noun (V + N2):N!.
These probabilities are shown in the top portion
of Table 2. Also shown in Table 2 are the com-
parable probabilities for cued recall. Since N, was
always provided by the experimenter, the proba-
bility of N2:Ni is simply the probability of N2,
and so on for the probabilities of V and V + N2.
Statistical analysis of conditional probabilities
is difficult, since (a) most conditionals for indi-
vidual subjects are 1.00 or 0, (b) there are so many
ties, and (c) some subjects fail to recall anything
from some types of sentences. Nevertheless several
trends do appear evident. In general the condi-
tional probabilities are very low for abstract sen-
 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS 389

Table 2 since subjects would find it easier to complete sen-

Conditional Probabilities for Experiment 1 tences than to free recall them. Since there was
a total of 648 sentences (36 subjects X 18 sen-
Type of sentence tences), the observed number of intrusions was
really relatively small.
Probability Bizarre Nonbizarre Abstract

Free recall Experiment 2

N 2 :N, .79 .88 .46
V:N, .81 .85 .33
N2:V .98 1.00 .75
(V + N 2 ):N, .79 .85 .29
Cued recall
N2 .51 .67 .22
V .53 .65 .17
N2:V .95 .97 .59
V + N2 .48 .63 .11
Note. NI = first noun in sentence, N 2 = second noun,
V = verb.
tences, thereby providing further support for the
contention that abstract sentences are poorly in-
tegrated. Even when NI is recalled, the probability
of recalling either V or N2 is quite low. Similarly
the conditional probabilities are consistently lower
for bizarre sentences than for nonbizarre ones; in
fact all eight comparisons showed lower proba-
bilities for bizarre sentences. The chances that all
eight comparisons would be in the same direction
is of course very small.
As can be seen in Table 2, the probability of
recalling V, given NI, is about the same as the
probability of recalling N2, given NI. Thus NI
elicits V and Nj equally well. This finding applies
for both cued and free recall and for all types of
sentences, with the possible exception of abstract
materials. In general the probability of recalling
both V and N2, given NI, is highest when sen-
tences are nonbi/arre and lowest when they are
abstract. This result also confirms the notion that
nonbizarre sentences are the most integrated and
abstract the least. Finally, it can be noted that if
the verb is recalled, Nj is almost certain to follow
(except for abstract sentences).
Intrusions. In free recall nonbizarre sentences
resulted in 3 intrusions, bizarre, 7, and abstract,
13 (there were also 11 single or double words that
were mostly extralist intrusions). The correspond-
ing intrusions for cued recall were 8, 13, and 32
(all sentences were completed if started). Hence
abstract sentences produced the most intrusions,
as might be expected if they failed to produce
integrated images. In contrast, nonbizarre sen-
tences produced the fewest intrusions, which is
consistent with the idea that nonbizarre sentences
would produce the best integrated images; usually
sentence fragments did not occur. The finding of
more intrusions for cued recall is not surprising,
Experiment 1 produced a Bizarreness X Pres-
ence or Absence of Cues interaction. Bizarre sen-
tences tended to result in greater N2 recall than
common sentences when free recall was used, but
not when recall was cued. This raises the question
of why bizarreness is effective only with free re-
call. A closer examination of the sentences reveals
a potential cuing effect in bizarre sentences that
is not present in nonbizarre sentences. If this is
so, the bizarreness effect in free recall would be
an artifact.
Merry and Graham (1978) generated their
materials by starting with pairs of nonbizarre sen-
tences that could be transformed into bizarre ones
by switching the subjects of the sentences. For
example, the nonbizarre sentences The hen pecked
the worm and The man smoked the cigar could
be transformed into The man pecked the worm
and The hen smoked the cigar. In a free recall
task, there would be the possibility that this trans-
formation would build in a type of intersentence
cuing. For example, if a subject recalled The hen
smoked the cigar, the word hen might well cue
things that hens do—namely, pecked the worm.
Additionally, recalling smoked the cigar might
serve as a cue for who typically smokes a cigar—
namely, man. In sharp contrast, the nonbizarre
sentence The man smoked the cigar contains no
obvious cue to the nonbizarre sentence The hen
pecked the worm. Consequently it may well be
that bizarre conditions in Merry's experiments
and our Experiment 1 benefited from intersen-
tence cuing, whereas nonbizarre conditions did
not. Experiment 2 tested this possibility using a
free recall procedure.
Method
Design and subjects. The design was a 2 X 2
between-group factorial, with one factor being
type of sentence (bizarre or nonbizarre) and the
other factor being intersentence cuing (present or
absent). The materials for any given group con-
sisted of 12 sentences of the same type (i.e., an
unmixed list). The group designations and sen-
tences used are shown in Table 3. The first letter
of the group designation refers to bizarre (B) or
nonbizarre (N), and the second letter, to cued
(C) or noncued (N).
The BC sentences were basically the same as
390 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS
Table 3
Sentences Used in Experiment 2
Sentence
Group BC (NC in parentheses)
The policeman ate (stood on) the hay.
The horse blew (stepped on) the whistle.
The snake sawed (crawled on) the board.
The carpenter shed (pinched) his skin.
The hen smoked (stepped on) the cigar.
The man pecked (picked up) the worm.
The doctor lived in (swam in) the pond.
The fish spoke on (heard) the telephone.
The soldier licked (carried) the kitten.
The cat waved (ripped) the flag.
The teacher lived in (opened) the kennel.
The dog wrote on (brushed against) the blackboard.
Group BN (NN in parentheses)
The policeman dressed (blew) the whistle.
The horse polished (ate) the hay.
The snake painted (shed) its skin.
The carpenter tasted (sawed) the board.
The hen fried (pecked) the worm.
The man ate (smoked) the cigar.
The doctor shaved (spoke on) the telephone.
The fish mowed (lived in) the pond.
The soldier tickled (waved) the flag.
The cat tied up (licked) the kitten.
The teacher climbed (wrote on) the blackboard.
The dog flew over (lived in) the kennel.
Note. BC = bizarre, cued; NC = nonbizarre, cued; BN
= bizarre, noncued; NN = nonbizarre, noncued.
those employed in Experiment 1. The NC sen-
tences were derived from the BC ones by changing
the verb. In NC sentences the word hen might be
expected to cue worm, cigar might cue man, and
so on. Groups BC and NC, which vary in bizarre-
ness but not in interpair cuing, permit a legitimate
test of bizarreness unconfounded by cuing. The
NN sentences were basically the same nonbizarre
sentences used by Merry and Graham (1978),
except for a few modifications designed to elim-
inate interpair cuing that might have been present
in Merry's materials. For example, we changed
The policeman drove the car to The policeman
blew the whistle, since the subjects of several other
sentences might also have driven a car (e.g.,
teacher, doctor, etc.). The BN sentences were
identical to the NN ones except for changing the
verbs to depict bizarre relationships. Groups NN
and BN, which differ in bizarreness but not in
interpair cuing, permit a second bizarreness test
unconfounded by cuing.
The subjects were 77 introductory psychology
students whose participation partially fulfilled a
course requirement. As before, the subjects were
run in eight small groups of from 7 to 12. The
data from 5 subjects were discarded because they
reported expecting the recall test.
Procedure. The overall procedures were sim-
ilar to those of Experiment 1 except that (a) there
were only 12 sentences and (b) the sentences were
read by the experimenter at the rate of 1 sentence
every 8 sec. Each group was asked to form an
image of each sentence and to rate that image on
a 5-point scale, where 1 represented nonbizarre
and 5 represented bizarre. The sentence The
mouse ran across the floor was given as an ex-
ample of a rating of 1, and The elephant played
the guitar was given as an example of a rating of
5. Then there was 1 min of letter e counting, fol-
lowed by the recall test. In recall the subjects were
given a sheet with 12 blank lines and were asked
to write the sentences as close to the original word-
ing as possible and in any sequence they wished.
Results
Imagery ratings. A mean imagery rating was
calculated for each subject. The means of these
mean ratings for Groups BC, NC, BN, and NN
were 4.71, 2.80, 4.03, and 1.32, respectively. Thus
groups with bizarre sentences had ratings higher
in bizarreness.
Recall. The scoring was the same as that used
by Merry (1980); that is, the total number of
nouns (N, and N2) was determined. The resulting
means for Groups BC, NC, BN, and NN were
12.06, 15.00, 11.78, and 11.28, respectively. It is
unlikely that these differences reflect differences
in imagery ratings, since the two sets of scores do
not seem to be related. The recall means were
evaluated by a 2 X 2 factorial analysis of variance,
which revealed a significant Type of Sentence X
Presence or Absence of Cues interaction, F(\,
68) = 4.10, MS, = 13.02.
Analysis of the simple effects showed no sig-
nificant difference between Groups BN and NN
(i.e., when intersentence cuing was absent; t <
1.00). When intersentence cuing was present
(Groups BC and NC), however, bizarreness pro-
duced lower recall, f(34) = 2.44. Thus in neither
comparison did bizarre sentences facilitate recall;
in fact the opposite was true for the BC-NC com-
parison.
The mean number of correct recalls was about
the same for N,, V, and N 2 . Collapsed over the
four groups, these values were 6.42, 6.00, and
6.04, respectively. The mean numbers of complete
sentences recalled for Groups BC, NC, BN, and
NN were 5.00, 6.28, 4.94, and 5.22, respectively.
Although groups with nonbizarre materials ap-
peared to recall more sentences completely, the
difference was not statistically significant, F(\,
 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS 391

68) = 2.73, MS* = 4.00. The groups with inter- trusions were made on the basis of intersentence
sentence cuing also failed to recall complete sen- cuing, the sentences would be converted from bi-
tences significantly more than noncued groups, zarre (e.g., The policeman ate the hay) to non-
F(l, 68) = 1.39, MSe = 4.00. bizarre (e.g., The horse ate the hay) or vice versa.
Conditional probabilities. The conditional Since all sentences were bizarre or all were non-
probabilities for Experiment 2 are shown in Table bizarre for a given subject, the subject could
4. Many of the trends that appeared in the con- readily reject any sentence of the opposite type.
ditionals in Experiment 1 also showed up here. In Hence intralist intrusions based on intersentence
general the probabilities are slightly higher for the cuing would probably not occur.
two groups that had nonbizarre sentences (NC
and NN) than for the corresponding groups that
had bizarre materials (BC and BN). Hence these General Discussion
data corroborate the conclusion from Experiment Groups BC and NN of Experiment 2 corre-
1 that nonbizarre sentences are better integrated. spond most closely with the bizarre and nonbi-
Also as in Experiment 1, the probabilities were zarre conditions in the Merry experiments and in
approximately equal for N 2 :N,, V:N,, and (N2 + our Experiment 1. Group BC had slightly greater
V):N|. Finally all probabilities were fairly high, N 2 recall than Group NN but not significantly so
so ceiling effects may diminish the observed dif- (t < 1.00). The fact that this comparison was not
ferences. significant in Experiment 2 but was significant in
Intrusions. In all groups about 66% of the in- Experiment 1 and in Merry's research suggests
trusions at N,, V, and N 2 were variations of (or that the bizarreness effect may -be obtained only
highly related to) the original words. The groups when mixed lists (containing both bizarre and
with intersentence cuing had the most intrusions. nonbizarre sentences) are used. In a mixed list
Group BC had 12 sentences with intralist intru- subjects might focus their attention on bizarre
sions and 12 with extralist; of those, most (11) sentences, but in an unmixed list subjects might
involved intrusions in the N] position. The other be more likely to devote their full attention to
intrusions were about equally divided among V, whatever sentences they have, whether bizarre or
N2, and both V and N 2 positions simultaneously. nonbizarre. Also, intersentence cuing of bizarre
Group NC had the same total number of intru- sentences in Merry's studies might have tended
sions, but only 4 of them were intralist and the to increase the attention subjects paid to them
rest were extralist; the largest single number of relative to the nonbizarre sentences, which had
intrusions was for the verbs. Group BN had 1 no such cuing.
intralist and 19 extralist intrusions, with 10 of The possibility that Merry's sentences con-
those occurring at the N 2 position. Group NN had tained a cuing bias favoring bizarre sentences over
only 2 intralist and 6 extralist intrusions. Thus nonbizarre can be seen by a comparison of Groups
nonbizarre sentences tended to produce more verb NC and NN of Experiment 2. Group NC, which
intrusions, whereas bizarre sentences tended to had the benefit of intersentence cuing, had sig-
produce more N, or N 2 intrusions. nificantly higher N2 recall than Group NN,
The interpretation of this pattern of intrusions /(38) = 3.09. This suggests that the nonbizarre
is not clear. It is doubtful that intersentence cuing conditions of Experiment 1 and of Merry's ex-
is responsible for the pattern because there are periments may have suffered from a lack of the
relatively few intralist intrusions. If intralist in- intersentence cuing that was present in the bizarre
conditions. It is obvious, however, that intersen-
tence cuing is not the only important variable,
Table 4 since nonbizarre cued recall (without intersent-
Conditional Probabilities for Experiment 2
ence cuing) was superior to bizarre cued recall
Condition (with intersentence cuing) in Experiment 1. This
result suggests that experimenter-provided overt
Non- Non- cues (intrasentence cues) facilitate recall of non-
Bizarre bizarre Bizarre bizarre bizarre sentences more than intersentence cues
Probability cued cued noncued noncued facilitate recall of bizarre sentences. It seems
likely that experimenter-provided cues have more
N 2 :N, .84 .90 .85 .98 effect on nonbizarre sentences because nonbizarre
V:N, .84 .90 .87 .92 sentences are better integrated.
N 2 :V .94 .94 .91 1.00
(N 2 + V):N, .81 .84 .78 .92 In summary, cuing is a major determinant of
the effectiveness of bizarreness. Bizarreness is
Note. N, = first noun in sentence, N 2 = second noun, sometimes effective when free recall is used, al-
V = verb. though the effectiveness may be the result of sub-
392 NOTES, COMMENTS, AND NEW FINDINGS

ject-supplied (intersentence) cuing. There is no tention. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973,

evidence that bizarreness will enhance perfor-
mance in a cued recall paradigm. In further re-
search on the bizarreness effect, careful attention
should be given to the effect of overt and covert
cues.
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Received September 12, 1980 •

Instructions to Authors

The journal will favor long articles integrating the results of several experiments and/or aimed at
important theoretical issues. Shorter articles will also be considered, however, when the results are
particularly clear-cut and important to the field. A section entitled "Notes, Comments, and New
Findings," is designed to contain contributions that do not meet the above criteria but that advance the
field of experimental psychology in the areas of concern of this journal. Such contributions could include
letters, comments on previously published articles or books, problems with theoretical conclusions or
empirical designs of earlier articles, replies to criticism, and brief reports of new work that have particular
merit but are not ready for publication as regular articles. For further information on content, authors
should refer to the editorial in the July 1980 issue of this journal (Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 439-440).
Authors should prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psycho-
logical Association (2nd ed.). Instructions on tables, figures, references, metrics, and typing (all copy
must be double-spaced) appear in the Manual. Manuscripts should include an abstract of 100-175
words. Authors are requested to refer to the "Guidelines for Nonsexist Language in APA Journals"
(Publication Manual Change Sheet 2, American Psychologist, June 1977, pp. 487-494) before sub-
mitting manuscripts to this journal.
Authors should submit manuscripts in quadruplicate, and all copies should be clear, readable, and on
paper of good quality. Authors should keep a copy of their manuscript to guard against loss. Mail
manuscripts to the Editor, Richard M. Shiffrin, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloom-
ington, Indiana 47405.
Addresses for the editors of the other JEP journals are as follows: Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, Gregory A. Kimble, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
27706 (submit 4 copies of the manuscript); Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception
and Performance, Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson, Acting Editor, Department of Psychology, Indiana
University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405 (submit 4 copies of the manuscript); Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, Donald S. Blough, Department of Psychology, Brown Uni-
versity, Providence, Rhode Island 02912 (submit 3 copies of the manuscript). When one of the editors
believes a manuscript is clearly more appropriate for an alternative journal of the American Psychological
Association, he may redirect the manuscript with the approval of the author.
The editors have agreed to use blind review when it is requested by the author. Authors requesting
blind review should prepare manuscripts to conceal their identity.