It has long been known that cues can be used to improve performance on memory recall tasks. There is evidence to suggest additional cues provide further benefit, presumably by narrowing the search space. Problems that require integration of two or more cues, alternately referred to as memory intersections or multiply constrained memory problems, could be approached using several strategies, namely serial or parallel consideration of cues. The type of strategy implicated is essential information for the development of theories of memory, yet evidence to date has been inconclusive. Using a novel application of the powerful Systems Factorial Technology (Townsend & Nozawa, 1995) we find strong evidence that participants use two cues in parallel in free recall tasks - a finding that contradicts two recent publications in this area. We then provide evidence from a related recognition task showing that while most participants also use a parallel strategy in that paradigm, a reliable subset of participants used a serial strategy. Our findings suggest a theoretically meaningful distinction between participants strategies in recall and recognition based intersection memory tasks, and also highlight the importance of tightly controlled methodological and analytic frameworks to overcome issues of serial/parallel model mimicry.

众所周知，可以使用提示来提高内存调用任务的性能。有证据表明，其他线索可能会缩小搜索空间，从而提供进一步的好处。需要集成两个或多个提示的问题，或者称为存储交集或多重约束的内存问题，可以使用几种策略来解决，即串行或并行考虑提示。所涉及的策略类型是发展记忆理论的重要信息，但迄今为止尚无定论。通过使用功能强大的系统因子技术的新颖应用（Townsend和Nozawa，1995），我们发现有力的证据表明参与者在免费召回任务中并行使用了两个线索，这一发现与该领域的两个最新出版物相矛盾。然后，我们从相关的识别任务中提供证据，表明尽管大多数参与者在该范例中也使用并行策略，但可靠的参与者子集使用串行策略。我们的发现表明，在基于回忆和识别的相交存储任务中，参与者策略之间存在理论上的有意义区别，并且还强调了严格控制的方法和分析框架对于克服串行/并行模型模仿问题的重要性。