In a previous study examining differences in free recall and paired-associates learning (i.e., cued recall) of animal and object names, we observed greater variability in cued recall accuracy than free recall accuracy. This difference may be explained by the fact that different mechanisms underlie paired-associate learning and single item memory (Bisby & Burgess, 2013), and the fact that paired-associate learning is though to involve more processes than free recall (i.e., encoding both items and their association or context rather than just individual items). However, we are not aware of any studies that explicitly test for variability differences, and our prior study used specific/narrow stimuli (i.e., animal and object words). The aim of the current set of experiments is to directly test for differences in accuracy variability using a more general stimulus set, and explore possible explanations for the effect. **The components below contain preregistrations, data files, analysis scripts, and experiment programs for the four experiments included in our manuscript.**