Abstract

studies have directly examined whether order of study itself influences retrieval efficacy. In contrast, many dozens of studies have examined this question in paired-associate learning, asking whether memory for simple pairs exhibits a forward asymmetry effect (i.e., better forward recall than backward recall). Surprisingly, such asymmetries are exceedingly hard to detect in pairedassociate tasks, with many studies producing nearly identical levels of forward and backward recall (see Ekstrand, The authors acknowledge support from National Institutes of Health grant MH55687. We are grateful to Kelly Addis for assisting in data collection and for helpful discussions on the analyses of Experiment 2. We also thank Marc Howard, Franklin Zaromb and Nelson Cowan for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael Kahana, Volen National Center for Complex Systems, MS 013, Brandeis University, Waltha

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