ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some investigations of the differences in recallability between various kinds of propositions. It examines two experiments which have a common procedure, differing only in the type of learning material used. Propositions may be different because of the role they play in a text base, that is, the proposition hierarchy, as such, may determine the recallability of propositions, independent of their properties as individual propositions. Crothers Edward J. has also investigated recall probability as a function of the hierarchical structure in a paragraph, but in his study, superordinate material was not recalled any better than subordinate material. That superordinate propositions were recalled better than propositions that were low in the sentence hierarchies is reminiscent of an observation reported by Johnson. The order of propositions in the base defines the rank of a proposition, such that the most superordinate propositions receive the lowest rank, with more and more deeply subordinated propositions receiving higher scores.
