Journal at Experimental Psychology

1969, Vol. 79, No. 1, 6-11

EFFECTS OF INTRALIST RULE ORDER ON LEARNING

CODEABLE TRIGRAMS 1

JOHN A. ROBINSON
University of Louisirille

The Underwood and Keppel (1963) coding task was analyzed into three com-
ponents: encoding, solution-word recall, and decoding. It was argued that
5s could be expected to formulate and use letter-order rules to mediate
coding. The principal concern of the paper was with the effects of intralist
rule order (IRO) on the learning of a two-rule list of codeable trigrams.
IRO was varied by presenting rule-associated trigrams in successive blocks
or in successive alternations. Four experiments were performed. The
results indicated that each task component was significantly affected by IRO
though the basis of the effects varied among the three components.

Underwood and Keppel (1963) devised
a task for exploring the role of coding
processes in verbal learning. They had 5s
learn a list of trigrams which could be en-
coded into words (e.g., UBT: TUB; BUT)
and required some 5"s to reproduce the tri-
grams during recall, but permitted others to
reproduce the constituent letters in any
order. List learning progressed more
rapidly under the latter condition. It would
seem that when literal recall is required,
encoding retards learning. A plausible ex-
planation for this effect is that decoding
the attempt to reconstruct the trigram let-
ter order from the word letter orderis dif-
ficult, especially when, as was the case for
the Underwood and Keppel (1963) mate-
rials, there is no rule by which the trans-
formation can be accomplished for all of the
trigrams in the list.
It is apparent that decoding could be
accomplished more systematically if the ma-
terials were such that letter-order rules
could be formulated to mediate this trans-
formation. A letter-order rule (LOR)
would be any statement of the letter moves
required to produce the word from the tri-
gram, or conversely, to reproduce the tri-
gram from its respective solution word. In
the simplest case all of the trigrams in a
list would be subject to the same LOR.
l
This research was sponsored by the Air Force
Office of Scientific Research, Office of Aerospace
Research, United States Air Force, under Grant
AF-AFOSR-1008-66. Grateful acknowledgment
is made of the assistance of Barry Rabin in the
running of 5s and the analysis of data.
However, lists could be constructed where
subsets of trigrams are associated with dif-
ferent LORs.
The effect of varying the number of LORs
in a list was investigated by Underwood
and Erlebacher (1965). They report that
a two-rule list is significantly harder than
a one-rule list but that increasing the num-
ber of LORs to four does not appreciably
increase task difficulty. Such a conclusion
implies that 5" attempted to use the coding
scheme built into the materials by the in-
vestigators. However, in the experiments
cited thus far encoding has always been
optional. Consequently, though error analy-
ses provide suggestive evidence for the
occurrence of encoding and decoding,
whether 5"s attempted to formulate LORs
for either of these transformations has re-
mained a matter of conjecture. In a recent
investigation (Robinson, 1967) it was
shown that 5"s will discover and use an LOR
for encoding and that predictable disruptions
of performance occur when LORs changed.
In view of this result it was decided that
rule-based coding merited more detailed con-
sideration.
The particular aspect of rule-based coding
chosen for study was that of intralist rule
order (IRO). Consider a list of codeable
trigrams devised so that two different LORs
may be used for coding, each for half of
the items. Under these conditions the order
of item presentation is concurrently an order
of rule presentation. That is, if S attempts
to formulate LORs, each item provides an
 INTRALIST RULES AND CODING DURING LEARNING
opportunity not only to study a particular
trigram but to attempt to determine which
LORs are represented in the list as well.
Thus, when the order of trigram presenta-
tion is randomized, rule order is also ran-
domized. It may be safely presumed that
such an arrangement is not the most efficient
way for rule learning to progress. The
question of interest then is whether other
nonrandom arrangements of rule-associated
trigrams differentially affect the rate at
which a list of codeable trigrams is learned.
In order to evaluate the effect of varying
IRO two types of lists were constructed, a
blocked (BLK) list and an alternating
(ALT) list. In the former type of list all
of the trigrams associated with one LOR
are presented in succession and are, in turn,
followed by all of those associated with the
other LOR. In the latter type of list the
LOR-associated trigrams are presented in
successive alternations.
IRO should directly influence ease of de-
coding. Specifically, a BLK list should be
easier to decode than an ALT list. A BLK
list could facilitate decoding in any of the
following ways: (a) The critical letter-order
cues which define the two LORs should be
more readily discriminated with successive
presentation of same-rule trigrams, i.e., rule
formulation should be facilitated. (6) Suc-
cessful decoding presumably involves recon-
structing trigram letter order from solution-
word letter order thus requiring the asso-
ciation of LORs with appropriate item sub-
sets. A BLK presentation should define
these subsets more easily and should permit
more effective association of rules and items.
(c) The LORs could be used to group the
respective trigrams in some fashion, i.e., the
LORs could provide an organizational
schema for recall. It should be easier to
exploit the organizational aspects of LORs
when rule-associated items are themselves
grouped.
There is no a priori reason to suppose
that decoding is the only component of the
task which would be affected by IRO. In-
deed, if Ss did attempt to formulate and use
appropriate LORs, it could be supposed that
encoding as well as decoding would be
7
affected by IRO. Encoding requires time
and the amount of time needed covaries with
a variety of factors (cf. Johnson, 1966).
Thus, for a list of trigram anagrams where
several of these factors are freely varied,
solution time would not be expected to be
related systematically to the order of item
presentation. If, however, 5" has discovered
a rule by which he can accomplish the de-
sired transformation for a whole class of
instances, then encoding time should exhibit
a systematic relationship to the order in
which the rule-governed sets are presented.
Specifically, when same-rule trigrams are
presented in a block, encoding time should
decline rapidly but increase again when a
different rule set is encountered. In con-
trast, when trigrams associated with dif-
ferent rules are presented in alternation,
solution time should, on the average, be
greater at most list positions than it is for a
corresponding BLK list and, further, should
exhibit a saccadic pattern reflecting the
"switching" character of encoding.
With regard to a third component of the
tasksolution-word recallthere seems to
be no reason for supposing that IRO would
differentially affect this in any way provided
that an equal number of trigrams have been
encoded with each type of list. Solution-
word recall could be influenced indirectly,
however, if as a function of IRO, there were
differences between lists in number of tri-
grams encoded. An implication of the pre-
ceding discussion of the possible effects of
IRO on encoding is that with a short ex-
posure interval more items would be success-
fully encoded with a BLK list than with an
ALT list. Thus, it could be expected that
when the exposure interval is brief, IRO
would influence word recall, but when the
exposure interval is sufficient for complete
encoding, IRO would have no effect on word
recall.
The conclusion was then that IRO may
affect each of the three components of the
taskencoding, word recall, and decoding
and that the cumulative effects of IRO
would be such that list acquisition would
progress more rapidly for a BLK list than
for an ALT list.
 JOHN A. ROBINSON
METHOD
Four experiments were performed. In Exp.
I no differentiation was made among the task
components; 5s simply practiced a BLK or ALT
list for several trials with trigram recall as the
performance requirement. Experiment II extended
an earlier investigation (Robinson, 1967) by exam-
ining the effects of IRO on encoding, i.e., on median
encoding or solution time. In Exp. Ill and IV
separate measures were taken of the effect of IRO
on each of the three task components by requir-
ing either solution-word recall or trigram recall
and by recording encoding time for each list item
on the first two of five practice trials. In addi-
tion, the trigram-presentation interval was varied
in Exp. Ill with either 2 sec. or an indefinite time
allowed for encoding.
Lists.Two lists of codeable trigrams, a train-
ing list and a test list, were constructed by select-
ing 20 single-solution CVC English words and
assigning them to the two lists in a manner which
guaranteed that the average Thorndike-Lorge fre-
quency of the two lists was equal, that each vowel
was represented twice in each list, and that no
other letter duplication occurred within either list.
WAX, PEW, GIN, JOB, and FUR are illustrative of
the words selected. Next, the words were permuted
to form codeable trigrams. For the training list
all words were permuted by the same LOR (2-3-1).
For the test list the words were divided into two
equal subsets each of which was permuted by a
different LOR (2-1-3 and 1-3-2, respectively).
Thus, the training list was a one-rule list while
the test list was a two-rule list. Finally, the tri-
grams of the test list were arranged so that rule-
governed items were either blocked or alternated
over list positions. Several randomizations of
the test list were prepared to insure that within
blocks each trigram occurred in each list posi-
tion or that each trigram occurred equally often in
successive pairs of alternations. The trigrams of
the training list were randomly assigned to list
positions but the order of presentation thereafter
was the same for all 5s.
Subjects.In Exp. I 30, in Exp. II 40, in Exp.
Ill 96, and in Exp. IV 40 students at the Univer-
sity of Louisville enrolled in the introductory
psychology course served as 5s. The 5s were run
individually in all experiments. Assignment of
5s to conditions was in order of appearance at the
laboratory in a manner which provided for suc-
cessive complete replications of the respective
treatment conditions.
Procedure.In all experiments 5s were given the
10-item training list to encode prior to practicing
their respective test list. The 5s were simply
asked to solve each trigram and were told that
solution time was being recorded. They were addi-
tionally instructed that, "If you are alert, you will
find that it is possible to systematically discover
what words the letters of each trigram would
form." The training-list items were presented
on a Stowe memory drum Model 4S9-B which was
advanced manually after 5 had said aloud each
solution word. Solution time was recorded with a
Standard Electric timer.
After completing the training list, 5s were in-
formed about the test-list task. In all experi-
ments they were instructed about the codeability of
the trigrams. The previously cited suggestion that
coding rules could be formulated was always in-
cluded in these instructions. With the exception
of Exp. I and the 2-sec. presentation-interval con-
dition of Exp. Ill, 5s were required to overtly en-
code by pronouncing the solution words and
encoding time was recorded for each list item.
Overt encoding was required on both trials of
Exp. II and III but only on the first two of five
trials in Exp. IV. In Exp. I, in the brief presen-
tation-interval condition of Exp. Ill, and on
Trials 3-5 of Exp. IV the test-list trigrams were
presented at a 2-sec. rate with a 1-sec. interitem
interval. In all other conditions of the several
experiments the trigrams were exposed for as
long as 5 required to pronounce the correct solu-
tion word.
Only trigram recall was required in Exp. I and
only trigram encoding was required in Exp. II.
In Exp. Ill exposure interval, IRO, and recall
criterion (solution word or trigram) were fac-
torially varied; the same variables, with the
exception of exposure interval, were factorially
varied in Exp. IV which further differed from
Exp. Ill in that five rather than two practice
trials were given on the test list. The typical
procedure, subject to variations already described,
consisted of instruction followed by test-list encod-
ing followed by a 1-min. written recall period.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Encoding.Statistical analyses of per-
formance took the form of comparing median
encoding time for the first five items of each
list with median encoding time for the last
five items of each list. In every case mean
median encoding time for the second half of
the training list was significantly shorter
than for the first half of the list.
Effects of IRO on test-list encoding as
determined from Exp. II have been sum-
marized in Table 2. Because of the irreg-
ular character of the distribution of encoding
times, the analysis of variance was per-
formed on transformed scores, viz., recipro-
cal median encoding times. The results of a
2 x 2 x 2 repeated-measures analysis of
variance indicated that median encoding
time was on the average significantly shorter
for a BLK list than for an ALT list, F (1,
38) = 5,67, p < ,05, but that there was a
 INTRALIST RULES AND CODING DURING LEARNING
Type of List X List Position interaction,
P (\, 38) = 11.17, /><.01. Specifically,
median encoding time decreases from first
to second half of list for an ALT list but in-
creases for a BLK list.
If changes in encoding time can be viewed
as reflecting encoding rule learning and rule
interference, then the results of Exp. II
offer support for the contention that IRO
may affect encoding as well as decoding.
Specifically, IRO determines the point of
maximum encoding interference which with
a BLK presentation is the last half of the
list, whereas with an ALT presentation it
is the first half of the list. It was hypothe-
sized that further evidence of the effect of
IRO on encoding would be reflected in a
difference between lists in the number of
solution words correctly recalled when tri-
gram exposure interval was varied. The
presence in Exp. Ill of the significant inter-
action Exposure Interval X Trials for the
ALT list, P (1, 22) = 7.51, p < .01, con-
firms this expectation. For, as can be seen
from Table 3, the increase in number of
words correctly recalled from Trial 1 to
Trial 2 is greater for an ALT list at the
prolonged exposure interval than it is at
the 2-sec. interval. In contrast, for a BLK
list the improvement over trials is propor-
tionally the same at both exposure intervals.
It should be noted, however, that the results
of both experiments indicate that encoding
interference is modest in degree and tran-
sient, i.e., it is easily overcome after the first
one or two trials.
Word recall.Interpretation of differ-
ences in solution-word recall as indirect
TABLE 1
NUMBER OF TRIGRAMS CORRECTLY RECALLED ON
SUCCESSIVE TRIALS AS A FUNCTION OF IRO
(Exp. I)
Trials
1 2 3 4 5 affects trigram recall can be judged from
BLK
X 3.73 6.40 7.93 8.60 8.40
SD 1.89 1.58 1.68 1.14 1.02
ALT
X 2.60 4.40 5.33 5.87 6.60
SD 1.08 1.14 1.96 1.88 2.06
TABLE 2
MEAN MEDIAN SOLUTION TIME ON SUCCESSIVE
HALVES OF THE Two TEST LISTS
(Exp. II)
Items
List
1-5 6-10
BLK
Trial 1 1.59 2.14
Trial 2 1.14 1.07
ALT
Trial 1 3.12 2.05
Trial 2 1.17 1.13
evidence of encoding interference is compli-
cated by the unexpected fact that word re-
call is higher for a BLK list than for an
ALT list. That is, solution-word recall is
itself affected by IRO. This difference, first
observed and found to be significant in Exp.
Ill, P (1, 88) = 16.12, p < .01, was repli-
cated in Exp. IV. The results of that ex-
periment are presented in Fig. 1 from which
it can be seen that the differential effect of
IRO on solution-word recall progressively
diminishes with successive practice trials.
The opposite trend was observed for the
effect of IRO on trigram recall. This dif-
ference in the way in which IRO affects
word vs. trigram recall was reflected in a
significant interaction between these two
variables, F (1, 36) = 26.63, p < .01. These
differences in solution-word recall may be
attributed to the organizational influence of
rule order. This interpretation receives
additional support from the fact that the
incidence of clustering of same-rule words in
recall was consistently higher with a BLK
list, e.g., in Exp. Ill, F (1, 36) = 50.53, p <
.01. Clustering, however, was greater than
chance (as determined from Formula 2 of
Bousfield and Bousfield, 1966) for both lists
in all treatment conditions of Exp. Ill and
IV.
Decoding.The way in which IRO
the results of Exp. I as reported in Table 1
and from the results of Exp. Ill and IV as
presented in Table 3 and Fig. 1, respectively.
It is evident that in every case a BLK list
facilitates decoding. The results of sepa-
rate analyses of variance performed on total
10 JOHN A. ROBINSON

but in the wrong order. GEs would appear

to provide indirect evidence of the occurr-
BLOCK - WORD
.__- ALTERNATE - WORD ence of coding and, in particular, to index
BLOCK - TRIORAM
-A ALTERNATE - TRIORAM
the relative difficulty of decoding. Consider-
ing the demonstrated advantage of a BLK
list it could be supposed that fewer GEs
would occur with such a list. However, in
each case the number of GEs associated with
a BLK list was negligibly different from that
associated with an ALT list. GEs are, how-
ever, pertinent to the question of whether
5s were, in fact, decoding rather than
merely rote learning the trigrams, for 56%
of the GEs produced in Exp. Ill and 61%
of those produced in Exp. IV could be
attributed to intralist-decoding rule interfer-
ence, i.e., the use of a rule from the list but
with an inappropriate word. This fact taken
in conjunction with a related observation,
viz., that on most of the occasions where 5"
had written a solution word in parentheses
1 2 3 4 5 next to a trigram the word was correct but
TRIALS the trigram was wrong, seems to indicate
FIG. 1. Mean number of words or trigrams that formulation of decoding rules is less
correctly recalled as a function of trials and type troublesome than is the association of these
of list. rules with their appropriate solution words.
Finally, it was noted that same-rule tri-
number correct over trials indicated that grams were consistently clustered in recall
trigram recall was significantly greater with at greater than chance levels with both BLK
a BLK list in each of the experiments: for and ALT lists. This would seem to indi-
Exp. I, F (1, 28) = 12.23, p < .01; for cate that rule order has an organizational
Exp. Ill, F (1, 44) =4.87, p < .05; for influence on decoding analogous to its pre-
Exp. IV, F ( I , 18) = 6.11, p < .05. sumed effects on solution-word recall.
The number and type of errors made by
5s attempting trigram recall was tabulated CONCLUSIONS
for each experiment. Other investigators 1. IRO significantly affects each of the com-
have reported a preponderance of "good ponents of this task. In particular, the suc-
errors" (GE), i.e., instances where the let- cessive presentation of same-rule trigrams, in
ters of a trigram were correctly reproduced contrast to alternating among the two rule sets,
uniformly enhances performance. How IRO
TABLE 3 contributes to performance varies depending
MEAN NUMBER ITEMS CORRECTLY RECALLED FOR on which of the task components is considered.
EACH CONDITION OF EXP. Ill With regard to encoding and decoding, it has
been supposed that a BLK presentation fa-
Word Recall Trigram Recall cilitates rule formulation and rule use. Both
Presentation
Interval the relationship between encoding time and
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 1 Trial 2 list position obtained in Exp. II (and repli-
2 Sec cated in Exp. Ill and IV) and the fact that
List BLK 6.16 8.00 3.66 5.92 trigram recall is consistently greater with a
List ALT 5.50 7.41 2.91 4.66 BLK list can be plausibly interpreted in these
Indefinite terms. In the latter case, however, there is
List BLK 6.50 8.33 3.00 5.42
List ALT 5.33 8.25 2.91 4.50 reason to believe that an additional factor is
involved, viz., the ease with which solution
 INTRALIST RULES AND CODING DURING LEARNING
words and decoding rules can be associated.
Finally, general organizational influences may
also be considered for that would seem to be
the most satisfactory way to account for the
enhanced solution-word recall that was observed
for a BLK list, as well as the high incidence
of clustering observed for both word and tri-
gram recall.
2. A consistent picture of the relative con-
tribution of each component to performance has
emerged from these experiments, viz., in order
of diminishing influence, decoding > word re-
call > encoding. This ordering can be further
interpreted in terms of the rate at which each
component approaches asymptotic performance.
For example, in the case of a BLK list encod-
ing is virtually complete after Trial 1, word
recall is nearly perfect after Trial 3, but tri-
gram recall is still significantly short of asymp-
tote by the end of practice. Hence, as the
11
observations of Underwood and Keppel (1963)
suggest, decoding is the major source of diffi-
culty in this type of learning.
REFERENCES
BOUSFIELD, A. K., & BOUSFIELD, W. A. Measure-
ment of clustering and of sequential constancies in
repeated free recall. Psychological Reports,
1966, 19, 935-942.
JOHNSON, D. M. Solution of anagrams. Psycho-
logical Bulletin, 1966, 66, 371-384.
ROBINSON, J. A. Rule learning and rule inter-
ference in trigram encoding. Psychological Re-
ports, 1967, 21, 921-927.
UNDERWOOD, B. J., & ERLEBACHER, A. H. Studies
of coding in verbal learning. .Psychological
Monographs, 196S, 79(13, Whole No. 606).
UNDERWOOD, B. J., & KEPPEL, G. Coding processes
in verbal learning. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behavior, 1963, 1, 250-257.
(Received December 31,1967)