in section one, on half of the versions, recall of owned
things was placed first and on half things not owned were
placed first. In section two, the 20 recall items, one per
page, were randomly ordered for each version, and the 12
criteria on each page were randomly ordered as well. Code
numbers in the upper right hand corner of the questionnaire
identified the randomization seed number, the copy number,
and the recall order. All questionnaires were printed on 8
inch by 14 inch, perforated, lined computer paper.
Procedure
After consent to participate was given, the subjects’
first task was to list exemplars of things owned and things
not owned. In contrast to traditional free recall studies
using classroom students as subjects (Bousfield & Sedgewick,
1944; Battig & Montague, 1946), the subjects in this study
knew the topics of both free recall tasks prior to
commencing the tasks. This was as a result of both the
informed consent process and subjects’ insistence on viewing
the questionnaire before consenting. To assure that all
subjects had equal prior exposure to the recall categories,
both recall tasks were displayed on the front page of the
questionnaire. Thus, there was an unknown amount of mental
preparation for the recall tasks.
The original plan of the study was to have subjects do