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I'm a little bit confused about the definition of a free recall test. According to Wikipedia:
Items are usually presented one at a time for a short duration, ...
If 10 items are presented at the same time for a short duration and subjects are asked to recall them later, could you still say this is a free recall test?
Memory recall is generally tested with one of three paradigms: serial, cued, and free. In serial recall the subject must recall the items in a specified order (e.g., forward or backwards). In cued recall, the items are usually presented in pairs and the subject is told to recall the matching item to one half of the pair. In free recall, subjects can repeat the items in whatever order they want.
Typically items are presented to subjects one at a time, so the experimenter can know in what order they are encoded. There is no reason that multiple items cannot be presented at once (e.g., words in a grid). How the items are presented is independent of the recall procedure (i.e., cued, serial, free).
Free recall refers to not being given exemplars during the retrieval task. For example, multiple choice would be called recognition here, not recall. The format of the presentation such as simultaneous vs. serial, or format of the recall in terms of ordering or grouping, would not affect the term free recall.
