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Subjects were divided into four groups based upon the possible combinations of high or low Extraversion and high or low General Activation. They learned two lists of paired associates in an A-B, A-Br paradigm, with a record being kept of the number of errors and the latency of correct responses. The groups were found to differ considerably more in terms of response latency than in terms of the probability of responding correctly. A number of the analyses indicated an interactive effect of Extraversion and General Activation on retrieval performance, in which high General Activation led to reduced response latencies for extraverts, but to slower latencies for introverts. This finding was interpreted with reference to arousal theory. Additional findings suggested that the poor performance of high arousal subjects was partially due to their tendency to take in information from dominant sources, a hypothesis suggested by Broadbent (1971).

Fifty-two subjects were assigned to one of four groups on the basis of scores on the Extraversion scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory and on the General Activation scale of the Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List. The subjects learned two lists composed of categorically related groups of words, with the number of categories and the number of words per category varied. Memory was probed by simultaneously presenting the subject with a category name and an item-position cue, and recording the recall latency. The major finding was that activation and extraversion interactively determined the recall latency for both category and item recall. The results were considered in light of arousal theory.

Subjects low or high in activation, as measured by Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List, participated in two semantic memory tasks, one involving speed of recall and the other speed of recognition. White noise at 80 db. re 20 muN/m-2 was presented on half the trials. There was an interaction between noise and activation under the recall condition only. High activation facilitated recall performance with high dominance items, but had a detrimental effect with low dominance items. The differential effect of arousal on recall and recognition was interpreted as indicating that arousal affected the retrieval component of recall. The findings with the dominance variable were interpreted in light of D.E. Broadbent's hypothesis that high arousal enhances the probability of sampling information from dominant sources.

Twenty-four subjects, 12 of whom were in the age range 18-30 years and 12 of whom were between 55-65 years, performed two semantic memory tasks. One task involved the recall of an instance from a designated category starting with a specified letter, and the second task required subjects to indicate whether a given work was or was not a member of a designated category (the recognition task). There was a differential effect of age on recall and recognition, the older subjects responding more slowly on the recognition task, but not on the recall task. The response times of the older subjects were less affected by the dominance of the to-be-retrieved information than were the younger subjects. These results suggested that subjects in the older age group may have retrieved information faster than the young subjects, but that they required longer to decide upon response.

In the first of two experiments, the stimulus items consisted of category names followed by a single letter (e.g., fruit-P). The subjects (half introverted, half extraverted) were required to respond as quickly as possible with a member of the specified category starting with the letter. Extraverts responded significantly faster than introverts, and more so when the most likely response was of low frequency than when it was of high frequency. In the second experiment, subjects were assigned to one of four groups representing the four combinations of high and low Extraversion and high and low General Activation. The speed-of-recall task from the first experiment was used on some trials; on the remaining trials, a speed-of-recognition task was used. Extraverts had greater response speed than introverts for recall, but not for recognition. That finding, plus interactions between Extraversion and General Activation, suggested an interpretation of the results in terms of the Yerkes-Dodson Law.

Comprehension latencies of sentences varying in concreteness and meaningfulness were obtained under conditions of visual interference and verbal interference. Concrete sentences were consistently more rapidly comprehended than abstract sentences. There was a significant interaction between type of interference and sentence concreteness, in which the advantage of concrete over abstract sentences within the verbal interference condition was considerably reduced under the visual interference condition, particularly for anomalous sentences. Additionally, in a further experiment, there was a significant interaction between sentence concreteness and imagery ability, high imagers producing shorter comprehension latencies than low imagers, especially with abstract sentences. The results suggest that imaginal processes constitute an important element of comprehension.