Memory asymmetry of forward and backward associations in recognition tasks.

There is an intensive debate on whether memory for serial order is symmetric. The objective of this study was to explore whether associative asymmetry is modulated by memory task (recognition vs. cued recall). Participants were asked to memorize word triples (Experiments 1-2) or pairs (Experiments 3-6) during the study phase. They then recalled the word by a cue during a cued recall task (Experiments 1-4) and judged whether the presented 2 words...