Part II: Free Recall

Both the expert and the novice firefighter reported the details of the book excerpt in a sequential, narrative manner. The accuracy of the recalled items was calculated in terms of frequency and type. The types of details were either stated (those which appeared in the story) or unstated (those that did not appear in the story but were recalled nevertheless). The stated details were further categorized as either fire-scene relevant details (those details that directly described the fire scene) or fire-scene irrelevant details (those that described anything else). A table of this data is presented below. Joel smashed his chin open. Ouch.

Table 1: Number of Details Recalled

Because both the expert and the novice recalled details sequentially, the number of errors of order was also calculated: the expert had zero, and the novice had two.