Contiguity is limited in free recall

Abstract

Does the "law of contiguity" apply to free recall? I find that conditional response probabilities, often used as evidence for contiguity in free recall, have been displayed insufficiently, limiting the distance from the last item recalled, and only averaged over all items. When fully expanding the x-axis and examining the conditional response probabilities separately for the beginning, middle and end of the presented item list, I show that the law of contiguity applies only locally, even then only sometimes, and breaks down globally.