The Next-In-Line Effect: Encoding or Retrieval Deficit?

Copyright 1985 by the Am

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1985. Vol. 48. No. 4. 853-862

a Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/85/S00.75

The Next-In-Line Effect: Encoding or Retrieval Deficit? Charles F. Bond, Jr. Connecticut College People cannot remember what happened when they were next-in-line to perform. Theorists have wondered whether this memory deficit reflects a failure to encode or an inability to retrieve preperformance events. These accounts are contrasted in a pair of studies. In Experiment 1, preperformance memories are assessed with free and cued recall. Although our semantic cues strongly facilitate access to memories, they do not moderate the next-in-line effect. In Experiment 2, subjects are told—either before or after performing—to make a special effort to remember preperformance events. If instructed afterward, subjects display the usual memory deficit. If instructed beforehand, they reverse the deficit and show a superior preperformance recall. The next-in-line effect is a failure at encoding, not at retrieval.

Students who expect to be called on may not remember their teachers' remarks. In a study of this phenomenon, Brenner (1973) had a group of subjects take turns reading words aloud. On a subsequent test of free recall, subjects could not remember words read immediately before their reading performance. Relative to subjects who merely listened to all the words, readers displayed a next-in-line effect, a deficit in recalling events up to 9 s prior to performance. Researchers have described characteristics of the next-in-line effect. Brenner (1973) showed that preperformance memory deficits depend on performance difficulty, with more difficult performances yielding larger deficits. Walker and Orr (1976) found that the magnitude of the next-in-line effect is independent of a performer's fear of negative evaluation. Brown and Oxman (1978) suggested that preperformance memory deficits might be a retroactive consequence of performing, much like retrograde amnesia (Detterman, 1975). Bond and Kirkpatrick (1982) discredited this suggestion, finding that subjects who anticipate performance have a memory deficit even if they never perform. In this article, I consider information-processing explanations for the next-in-line effect.

I am grateful to Rich Morrison and Nancy Wells for their help with this research. Requests for reprints should be sent to Charles F. Bond, Jr., Box 1402, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut 06320. 853

Brenner (1973) attributed preperformance memory deficits to an encoding failure. In his view, the anticipation of performance consumes resources needed to encode ongoing events; although preperformance events may be attended as performance cues, they are never entered into long-term memory. Innes (1982) suspected that a retrieval failure contributes to the next-in-line effect. People experience arousal when they perform in front of others (Moore & Baron, 1983) and may continue to experience arousal when the performance is done. According to Innes, a postperformance arousal impedes the retrieval of preperformance memories. Does the nextin-line effect result from a failure to encode or from a failure to retrieve preperformance events? Innes (1982) inferred an answer to this question from his recent experimental results. Brenner (1973) asked subjects to read a series of unrelated words aloud; deficits in remembering these words constituted his next-inline effect. Wondering if the effect would be specific to one type of material, Innes (1982) asked subjects to read unrelated words aloud at some next-in-line memory trials; at other trials, he asked them to read aloud words that were semantically related to one another, words that were associates of a common stimulus. Innes's subjects showed a strong preperformance deficit in remembering unrelated words—exhibiting worse memory than did listeners for each word prior to performance. They suffered a smaller deficit in

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remembering semantically related words, showing worse memory than did listeners for the one word immediately prior to performance, but no worse memory for earlier words. Innes (1982) characterized the next-in-line effect as an arousal-induced retrieval deficit that can be offset by self-generated retrieval cues. Words heard prior to performance are encoded into long-term memory, and a postperformance arousal hinders access to preperformance memories. Despite the arousal, performers recall a few words and try to use their memories as retrieval cues. Performers' self-generated cues aid the retrieval of related memories, yet are useless in the recovery of unrelated memories; hence, the cues neutralize (or fail to neutralize) the arousal-induced retrieval deficit, depending on the nature of the to-be-remembered material. Innes's (1982) results do not compel a retrieval-failure explanation. His manipulation of word relatedness was introduced at the time of encoding; and there is evidence that related words are encoded differently than are unrelated words (Einstein & Hunt, 1980). In the following experiments, I tested the retrieval-failure account of preperformance memory deficits. To avoid interpretational ambiguities, I waited until subjects had heard all the words at a next-in-line memory trial, then introduced conditions favorable to recall. Is the next-in-line effect a remediable deficit in accessing encoded memories? Experiment 1 In a classic experiment (Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966), subjects studied a list of words, then remembered the list under one of two conditions. Some subjects responded on a blank sheet of paper; others wrote their responses beside the names of categories of which the to-be-remembered words were members. The results of this experiment showed that category names strongly facilitated recall, providing access to memories that would not otherwise have been retrieved. Subsequent research (Watkins & Gardiner, 1982) indicated that retrieval is consistently facilitated by semantic cues. Innes (1982) hypothesized that the next-

in-line effect reflects a failure to retrieve preperformance memories, and that the effect can be moderated by subject-generated semantic retrieval cues. In Experiment 1, I tested this reasoning by supplying semantic cues at the time of recall. If the next-in-line effect is a retrieval deficit and if subjectgenerated cues can moderate the deficit, experimenter-supplied cues should also alleviate the next-in-line effect. Events that are never encoded cannot be recovered. Hence, an encoding-failure account predicts that retrieval cues have no effect on preperformance memory deficits. Method Subjects The subjects were 96 introductory psychology students at Connecticut College. Twenty-four subjects participated at each of four experimental sessions.

Procedure Twenty-four desks formed a large circle along the periphery of a classroom. Each desk was identified by a number between 1 and 24, with numbers assigned clockwise around the room. Once 24 subjects had arrived for a session, each was seated at a random desk. Taperecorded instructions indicated that the subjects were participating in a study of memory. A number between 1 and 24 would be called out on tape once every 5 s. Each time a number was called, the subject seated at the corresponding desk turned over the top index card from a stack on his or her desk, read aloud a word that had been typed on that card, then placed the card back on the desk, word-side down. Meanwhile, subjects were to pay attention to all of the words being read aloud; later their memories would be tested. On each of four memory trials, half of the subjects were called on to read words; the other half merely listened. Subjects at odd-numbered desks served as readers on Trials I and 3; subjects at even-numbered desks were the readers at Trials 2 and 4. Readers' numbers were called in a consecutive order, beginning with 1 (or 2), going twice around the circle, and ending with 7 (or 8). Before each trial, subjects were told whether they would be readers or listeners and also, the order in which numbers would be called. Readers could anticipate precisely when they would be called upon to perform. At each experimental trial, subjects heard 28 unrelated English words. In previous research (Battig & Montague, 1969; Shapiro & Palermo, 1970), each word had been given as one of the three most common associates to a category name. Having heard 28 words in a random order, subjects waited 30 s, then turned over either a noncued or a cued recall sheet. The noncued recall sheet was blank. The cued recall sheet listed a category name for each word just heard, plus two category names for which no word

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had been heard. (The two "bogus" cues are explained below.) Cues were listed in a random order, unrelated to the order of word presentation. Subjects 1-12 received cues after Trials 1 and 4, and no cues after Trials 2 and 3. Subjects 13-24 received cues after Trials 2 and 3, and no cues after Trials 1 and 4. During introductory instructions, subjects learned that they might receive semantic cues and were given examples. On each trial, however, they heard all 28 words before discovering the conditions of recall. Whether recall was cued or not cued, subjects had 2.5 min to write down the words they had heard.

Results An experimental assistant scored the recall sheets with a lenient criterion, giving credit to words that were phonetically similar to the target word. To reduce serial position effects, the first two and the last two words heard at each trial were omitted from all analyses. Overall Recall A 2 X 2 (Reader/Listener X Cues/No Cues) within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the percentage of words correctly recalled. The analysis revealed a strong main effect of retrieval cues. With cues, subjects recalled 61.0% of the words they had heard; with no cues, they recalled 41.5% of the words, F(l, 95) = 221.64, p < .0001. Retrieval cues had no different effect on readers than on listeners, F(l, 95) = .56. Nor did readers and listeners differ in overall recall, remembering 50.8 versus 51.7% of the words, F(\, 95) = .86. Role of Guessing Subjects might be able to guess the correct responses to semantic cues. To assess the role of guessing, I followed the advice of Watkins and Gardiner (1982) by giving subjects bogus retrieval cues, cues for which there was no correct response. Like the bona fide retrieval cues, the bogus cues were category names from the Battig and Montague (1969) and the Shapiro and Palermo (1970) norms. Prior to the experiment, I had selected one of the top three associates to each bogus cue. Though subjects would never hear the designated associate, they might guess that it was the correct response to its category name. Following Watkins and Gardiner (1982), I estimated the percentage of correct guesses

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to bona fide retrieval cues from the percentage of designated guesses to bogus cues. Each subject received four bogus cues (two at each cued trial). As a population, the subjects could have guessed to bogus cues on 384 occasions. They gave the pre-experimentally designated guess on only eight occasions—2.08% of the possible guesses. Readers made seven of the eight designated guesses. From this analysis, I concluded that guessing has little effect on cued recall in this setting. The cues aided memory retrieval. Position-Specific Recall At each trial, I was interested in memory for 24 words; two had been read aloud by each of 12 readers. In the analysis of each reader's recall data, words were tabulated by their position relative to that subject's reading performance. After giving one performance, each reader heard 12 words, then gave a second performance. Words heard after one performance but before another were analyzed by their position relative to the nearer performance. The one word that was equidistant from the two performances was analyzed by its position relative to both. In his study of the next-in-line effect, Brenner (1973) paired each reader with the listener at an adjacent seat, and found that listeners had an elevated recall for their neighbors' words. Brown and Oxman (1978) noted that the elevated recall may artifactually inflate the next-in-line effect, given Brenner's pairing scheme. To avoid this possibility, we paired each listener with a reader randomly chosen from those not seated adjacent to the listener, and tabulated the listener's memories by their position relative to this nonneighbor reading partner's performance. The results of the positional tabulation appear in Figure 1. Numbers on the horizontal axis designate the position of a word relative to the reader's (or reading partner's) performance. Words that the subject (or partner) read aloud are plotted at Position 0; words heard earlier and later are plotted at negative and positive positions, respectively. A 2 X 2 X 13 (Reader/Listener X Cues/No Cues X Relative Word Positions) ANOVA was applied to the data, with the effects of word position partitioned into three orthogonal

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mance interaction would have reflected any impact of cues on the next-in-line effect. It yielded a nonsignificant F(5, 475) = .90. Cues helped readers recall words they heard before performing, as Figure 1 will verify. This effect does not depend on when the word was heard; the Cues X Positions Before Performance interaction on reader recall yields a nonsignificant F(5, 475) = 1.18. And the effect is not specific to readers—cues generally facilitate retrieval. In some research (Brenner, 1973), subjects cannot remember what happened just after a performance. On the present noncued trials, readers recalled fewer words than did listeners -6 -5 -4 -J -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 at Positions 1 and 2, ((95) = -3.67 and -2.25, POSITION RELATIVE TO PERFORMANCE respectively; each p < .03. This difference Figure 1. Position-specific recall in Experiment 1. may be an artifact of elevated listener recall; readers remembered words just after perforcomponents: differences among positions be- mance as well as words long after performance fore performance, differences among positions (on noncued reading trials, a contrast of after performance, and a difference between Positions 1 and 2 with Positions 3-6 yields memory for one's own word versus others' F(l, 95) = .32). If given retrieval cues, readers words. have no difficulty remembering what hapIn Brenner's (1973) research, subjects could pened just after performance. The ANOVA not recall what had happened when they showed no Reader/Listener X Positions After were next-in-line to perform. On a test of Performance interaction and no three-way free recall, my subjects suffered this preper- Cues X Reader/Listener X Positions After formance memory deficit. Readers recalled Performance interaction, F(5,475) = 1.64 and fewer words than did listeners at each of the 1.72, ns, respectively. three positions just prior to performance, As in earlier research, subjects recalled remembering significantly fewer words at Po- words they had read aloud much better than sitions -2 and -1 (for the reader/listener other words. This produced a large Reader/ difference on no cue trials, ((95) - -1.99, Listener X Own Versus Others' words interp = .05; and ((95) = -3.01, p < .005, respec- action, F(l, 95) = 214.33, p < .0001. Cues tively). I had wondered whether retrieval cues facilitate memory of others' words more than would eliminate the next-in-line effect. They one's own words, Cues X Reader/Listener X did not. On a cued test of recall, readers Own Versus Others' Words interaction, F(\, remembered significantly fewer words at Po- 95) = 19.18, p < .0001. A ceiling on ownsitions -2 and -1 than did listeners—1(95) = word recall may contribute to this three-way -3.18,p < .005; and f(95) = -2.22, p< .03, interaction. respectively—and they showed a preperformDiscussion ance memory scallop, remembering fewer of the words at the two positions just before The results of Experiment 1 do not support performance than for words at the four earlier Innes's retrieval-failure explanation of the positions (for this contrast on cued reader next-in-line effect. The category names of recall, F(l, 95)= 13.18, p< .001). In the Experiment 1 clearly facilitated retrieval, inANOVA, the next-in-line effect produced a creasing recall by nearly 50%. True, readers Reader/Listener X Positions Before Perfor- were given access to many preperformance mance interaction, F(5, 475) = 2.76, p < .025. memories, but so were listeners. If the nextNo other effect involving positions before in-line effect is defined as a reader-listener performance is significant. The Cues X difference, retrieval cues do nothing to modReader/Listener X Positions Before Perfor- erate the effect, much less eliminate it.

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Subjects showed a smaller preperformance deficit in remembering related words than unrelated words (Innes, 1982). People can always recall some of the events that surround a performance. Innes argued that performers use their memories as cues for retrieving related memories. But there is another possibility. Recall can inhibit subsequent recall—a phenomenon known as output interference (Roediger, 1974). In an experiment by Slamecka (1968), subjects studied semantically related words, then received some of those words as retrieval cues. The part-list cueing did not facilitate memory for the rest of the list; in fact, it seemed to inhibit retrieval. Smith (1971) tested for output interference by manipulating the order of retrieval cues. Results showed that the later in the recall period a cue was encountered, the less often the corresponding memory was retrieved. These demonstrations raise doubts about Innes's retrieval-cue interpretation by indicating that performer-generated memories might inhibit (not facilitate) the retrieval of preperformance events. The demonstrations suggest an alternative retrieval-failure explanation for the next-inline effect. Having been weakly encoded, preperformance memories may be unusually susceptible to output interference—their retrieval being blocked by the prior retrieval of stronger memories. Semantic cues would not prevent output interference unless a subject happened to encounter the preperformance cue early. Rarely would this have occurred in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 Experiment 2 tested an output-interference explanation for the next-in-line effect. To encourage an early preperformance retrieval, I waited until the recall period after a nextin-line trial, then instructed readers to remember words heard prior to performance. Epstein, Ruggieri, and Schermerhorn (1980) reported a related procedure. After seeing a list of words, subjects were told to be sure to remember the word belonging to a specified semantic category. These subjects succeeded in remembering the word, recalling it no less often than did subjects who had received the

priority instructions before seeing the list. If readers in a next-in-line experiment can remember preperformance words on a similar posttrial instruction, they must have encoded the words, and their usual memory deficit must reflect a remediable failure at retrieval— perhaps an output interference. If readers do not remember preperformance words despite a posttrial instruction, they might not have encoded the words. And if a pretrial instruction facilitates preperformance recall, whereas the posttrial instruction does not, the data will implicate an encoding failure as one cause of the next-in-line effect. Method Subjects Subjects in Experiment 2 were 48 introductory psychology students, 24 at each of two experimental sessions. Prior to the experiment, these students had not been familiar with the next-in-line effect.

Procedure In procedure, the study differed from Experiment 1 in only a few respects. Subjects were given five memory trials, not four. Subjects heard unrelated English words that had been drawn from the most frequently used 5% of words in written American English (Kucera & Francis, 1967). Having heard the last word at a trial, subjects waited 30 s before beginning a written test of free (not cued) recall. And the recall period lasted 1.5 (not 2.5) min.

Experimental Conditions The initial trial served to familiarize subjects with the procedure. For practice, even-numbered subjects read words aloud; odd-numbered subjects listened. Each subject read words aloud at two of the later trials. At both of these reading trials, the subject received a typewritten warning about the next-in-line effect, instructing him or her to make a special eifort to recall words heard immediately prior to performance. Subjects were given this warning after hearing all of the words at the earlier of their two reading trials, in the 30-s lapse before the recall period. Readers received the same warning before their later reading trial, in a 30-s lapse before the first number was called. While readers perused the typewritten warning (after, then before a trial), listeners perused a typewritten message reminding them to remember the words read aloud. In designing the experiment, I assumed that a subject who had been warned of the next-in-line effect would remember the warning on subsequent memory trials. Hence, I could not let a warning before precede a warning after. Subject to this constraint, I did some counterbalancing. At Session 1, even-numbered subjects were readers at Trials 2 and 4; odd-numbered subjects, at Trials 3 and

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Warning Before

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Figure 2. Position-specific recall in Experiment 2. 5. At Session 2, even-numbered subjects were readers at Trials 2 and 3; odd-numbered subjects, at Trials 4 and 5. In Experiment I and in two earlier experiments (Bond & Kirkpatrick, 1982), I had found no trial-to-trial differences in preperformance memory deficits.

Results and Discussion Recall data were scored as in Experiment 1. Again, the first two and the last two words of each trial were not analyzed. Overall Recall The percentage of words recalled at Trials 2-5 was submitted to a 2 X 2 within-subjects ANOVA, with time of warning (before vs. after hearing the words) and the subject's role (reader vs. listener) as factors. Although the analysis revealed no main effects, there was a strong two-way interaction, F(l, 47) = 15.52, p < .001. Listeners recalled more words if warned after the memory trial, rather than before, showing 35.9% versus 28.9% correct recall, respectively, J(47) = 3.66, p < .001. Readers recalled slightly fewer words if warned afterward than if warned beforehand, remembering 31.4% versus 34.6% of the words, respectively, f(47) = -].81,p = .076. Perhaps the late control message motivates listener retrieval and the early warning facilitates reader encoding, or maybe these effects arise from our experimental design, which gave subjects the warning before at a later trial than the warning after. In any case, overall reader-listener differences should be consid-

ered in the interpretation of any positionspecific differences. Position-Specific Recall Recall data from Trials 2-5 were tabulated by position relative to the reader's (or a random nonneighbor reading partner's) performance, as in Experiment 1. In Figure 2, data from subjects warned before the trial appear at the left and data from subjects warned after the trial, at the right. I analyzed the data with a Time of Warning X Reader/ Listener X Word Position ANOVA, again distinguishing among positions before performance, positions after performance, and own versus others' words. As usual, readers remembered more of their own words than others' words, Reader/ Listener X Own Versus Others' Words interaction, F(l, 47) = 100.60, p < .0001. Time of warning does not significantly affect the differential own-word recall. My subjects suffered no temporally local postperformance memory deficit. Though readers warned after a memory trial have generally poor recall, the ANOVA showed no main effect or interaction involving a word's position after performance, lowest p > .10. Ordinarily, people cannot remember what happened just prior to a public performance. In the present experiment, subjects were warned of this next-in-line effect. If warned before a memory trial, they managed to avoid the preperformance memory deficit, as shown

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at the left of Figure 2. In fact, readers overcompensated for the deficit, recalling more Position — 1 words than did listeners, /(47) = 3.88, p