Direction of presentation of elements as a means of producing the isolation effect

Defines the isolation effect as the phenomenon in which a heterogeneous item is learned and remembered more easily when presented in a series of homogeneous items. The present study with 100 undergraduates was designed to determine whether an item entering the visual field from a different direction was learned in a significantly better way than the same item when it was inserted in a control list where there was no such distinction. Ss were presented a series of 12 consonant-verb-consonant trigrams formed with Latin alphabets. All trigrams appeared to move along a screen from left to right with the exception of the 7th item, which moved from right to left. The association value of the trigrams was obtained by calibrating them according to the techniques adopted by J. A Glaze (1928). Results show that presenting an item in a direction opposite to the direction of presentation of all the other elements of the series produced the isolation effect