The present study investigated the human ability to selectively process pictures and words in free recall. We explored whether successful bias towards a subset of priority items occurs at the expense of the remaining items-i.e., whether successful priority item bias necessitates the dumping of information related to non-priority items. It has been shown that an increase in the percentage of correct recalls to items given priority in the pre-test instructions induces a decrease in the percentage of correct recalls for non-priority items. Even in a free recall experimental paradigm, the information dumping phenomenon was observed. However, there were no effects of stimulus presentation time and stimulus modality (picture vs. word) on the percentage of correct recalls detected.