The Interaction of Sentence Characteristics and Mode of Presentation in Recall

The present study was designed to demonstrate that the recall of sentences in a conventional experiment is different from recall in even the most minimally conversational conditions when sentences include certain structures characteristic of ordinary speech. Sentences were constructed which included modal verbs, and the words "even" and "only" (called here underdetermined elements), alone and in combination with negation and question transformations. In a control experiment sentences included these transformations but lacked underdetermined elements. Twenty subjects heard such modal sentences on a tape recording. Twenty other subjects heard the same sentences in a conversational setting in which the sentences were said by an experimental accomplice and the subject replied briefly after hearing each one. Recall of the modal sentences was different in the two conditions. In the tape condition there was a decrement with increasing grammatical complexity but not in the conversation condition. The difference between the conditions can be attributed to the underdetermined elements. The addition of these elements to a sentence causes a decrement in the tape condition but not in the conversation condition. The addition of ordinary transformations to modal sentences affects recall in the two conditions the same way. Hence even in modal sentences, the differential effect can be attributed specifically to underdetermined elements but not to ordinary transformations. Recall of the ordinary transformed sentences in the control experiment was the same in both conditions. Hence the effects found in the main experiment are not specific for modal sentences.