Word fragments as aids to recall: the organization of a word.

This paper discusses the organization of a single word. It shows that the beginning of a word is the best cue for eliciting that word; the middle is the poorest cue. S was shown a list of words 1 by 1 on a memory drum. (Some lists had 6-letter words and some had 9-letter words.) Then S saw a fragment of the word, and he had to recall the entire word. The fragment was the beginning, or the middle, or the end of the word. 1 list, for example, contained the word "recognize," and S was shown the fragment "r e c -," or " o g n ," or " i z e." A beginning fragment elicited the correct response most readily and with the shortest latency. The middle elicited the correct response least readily and with the longest latency. These results are also related to the issue of associative symmetry.