<p>In many earlier investigations a recall advantage of auditory lists spoken in a single voice has been found over recall of lists spoken in two alternating voices. One explanation proposed is an organization strategy which makes recall of alternating-voice lists so difficult. The strategy implies sorting same-voice words into same-voice groups at encoding. Based on this proposition, it was assumed that voice-by-voice recall would be better than recall in order of presentation, as then the recall instruction and the organization of items in memory would be in concordance. The present experiment tested and was unable to support this hypothesis. However, an intriguing interaction between recall instruction and the sex of the participants was found, indicating that males perform worse in the voice-by-voice recall instruction than in serial recall while females’ performance did not differ between the two recall instructions. Implications of these results are discussed.</p>

In many earlier investigations a recall advantage of auditory lists spoken in a single voice has been found over recall of lists spoken in two alternating voices. One explanation proposed is an organization strategy which makes recall of alternating-voice lists so difficult. The strategy implies sorting same-voice words into same-voice groups at encoding. Based on this proposition, it was assumed that voice-by-voice recall would be better than recall in order of presentation, as then the recall instruction and the organization of items in memory would be in concordance. The present experiment tested and was unable to support this hypothesis. However, an intriguing interaction between recall instruction and the sex of the participants was found, indicating that males perform worse in the voice-by-voice recall instruction than in serial recall while females’ performance did not differ between the two recall instructions. Implications of these results are discussed.