Abstract

This study is designed to investigate whether the sequence of input is influential in the recollection of the retained information. Eighty first year students, 40 girls and 40 boys, studying in ELT department participated in the study. Three tasks were administered to the participants. In the first test three different lists of words and their counterparts are given. The participants were asked to learn the words in a column and their counterparts in the next one. They were informed that they were going to be given a test two days later. In the second test, administered two days later following the first one, they were given the lists as the sequence of the words was reversed. In the third test, the participants were given the words tea, window, spill and break as a free association test. While the failure in the recollection of paired-associate words in Forward Recall tests was low, it was significantly high in Backward Recollection tests. The findings show that the sequence of the input at the time of retention is crucial in the recollection of the information stored in memory.

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