The purpose of this study was to test the following hypothesis which the authors interpret as a corollary of Marble's law: The serial order of recall of the words of a stimulus-list by individual Ss should be a negative function of the commonality of the recall of the words by the group. It is assumed that this hypothesis is applicable when the Ss constituting the group show an optical degree of cultural homogeneity. The method was that of presenting stimulus-lists of unrelated words and of words in categories to eight different groups of Ss for learning. The Ss were instructed to write the words they were able to recall in the order of their occurrence in memory. Support for the experimental hypothesis was indicated by the negative correlations existing between serial order of recall and commonality of response.
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