Is organization decided at encoding? Differentiating the effects of encoding and retrieval strategies.

Although there is evidence temporal information is both encoded and retrieved automatically, temporal contiguity in recall is modulated by strategic control processes. It is unclear if these control processes operate primarily at encoding, by interfering with learning temporal information, or at retrieval, by organizing recall based on non-temporal associations. To address this question, we independently manipulated encoding and retrieval strategies. Prior to encoding the first list, subjects were told to focus on either temporal or semantic associations and ignore the other (initial strategy). Before recalling the final list, half of subjects were instructed to switch strategies, while the other half kept the same strategy (test strategy). Temporal contiguity was observed in all conditions. A semantic test strategy greatly reduced temporal contiguity, while there was only a small effect of initial strategy. Variations in temporal contiguity may be primarily due to differences in intentional memory search at retrieval, rather than encoding.