Jennifer H. Coane

Test-enhanced learning of natural concepts: effects on recognition memory, classification, and metacognition.

Three experiments examined testing effects on learning of natural concepts and metacognitive assessments of such learning. Results revealed that testing enhanced recognition memory and classification accuracy for studied and novel exemplars of bird families on immediate and delayed tests. These effects depended on the balance of study and test trials during training. Metacognitive measures provided results suggesting that participants were aware of the beneficial effects of testing. A new measure of metacognition at the level of categories is introduced and shown to be potentially useful for theory and applied purposes. It is argued that focusing on optimizing the learning of natural concepts encourages the convergence of theorizing about memory, concept learning, and metacognition and holds promise for the development of applications to education.

False Memory in a Short-Term Memory Task

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.

The Role of Forgetting Rate in Producing a Benefit of Expanded Over Equal Spaced Retrieval in Young and Older Adults

The current study examined the effects of two manipulations on equal and expanded spaced retrieval schedules in young and older adults. First, we examined the role that the type of expansion (systematic vs. nonsystematic) has in producing a benefit of expanded retrieval. Second, we examined the influence of an immediate retrieval attempt to minimize forgetting after the original encoding event. It was predicted that including multiple retrieval attempts with minimal intervening spacing (best accomplished in a nonsystematic retrieval schedule) would be necessary to produce a benefit of expanded retrieval over equal spaced retrieval for older adults but not young adults due to age differences in working memory capacity. Results from two experiments revealed that the presence of an expanded over equal spaced retrieval benefit is modulated by the extent to which the spacing conditions minimize forgetting in the early retrieval attempts in the spaced conditions. As predicted, these conditions differ substantially across young and older adults. In particular, in older adults two intervening items between early retrieval attempts produce dramatic rates of forgetting compared to one intervening item, whereas younger adults can maintain performance up to five intervening events in comparable conditions. Discussion focuses on age differences in short term forgetting, working memory capacity, and the relation between forgetting rates and spaced retrieval schedules.

The role of test structure in creating false memories

In the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, studying lists of semantic associates results in high rates of false recognition of a nonpresented critical word. The present set of experiments was designed to measure the contribution of additional processing of list items at test to this false memory effect. The participants studied sets of lists and then performed a recognition task for each set. In three experiments, using this paradigm, we investigated false recognition when the number of studied list items presented at test (0, 6, or 12) was manipulated. In Experiments 2 and 3, false recognition of critical lures associated to both studied and nonstudied lists increased significantly as the number of list items included in the test increased. These results indicate that processes occurring at retrieval contribute to false memory effects found with the DRM paradigm.

Repetition Priming Across Distinct Contexts: Effects of Lexical Status, Word Frequency, and Retrieval Test

Repetition priming, the facilitation observed when a target is preceded by an identity prime, is a robust phenomenon that occurs across a variety of conditions. Oliphant (1983), however, failed to observe repetition priming for targets embedded in the instructions to an experiment in a subsequent lexical decision task. In the present experiments, we examined the roles of priming context (list or instructions), target lexicality, and target frequency in both lexical decision and episodic recognition performance. Initial encoding context did not modulate priming in lexical decision or recognition memory for low-frequency targets or nonwords, whereas context strongly modulated episodic recognition for high-frequency targets. The results indicate that priming across contexts is sensitive to the distinctiveness of the trace and the reliance on episodic retrieval mechanisms. These results also shed light on the influence of event boundaries, such that priming occurs across different events for relatively distinct (low-frequency) items.

Not all sources of familiarity are created equal: the case of word frequency and repetition in episodic recognition

Low-frequency (LF) words produce higher hit rates and lower false alarm rates than high-frequency (HF) words. This word frequency mirror pattern has been interpreted within dual-process models of recognition, which assume the contributions of a slower recollective process and a relatively fast-acting familiarity process. In the present experiments, recollection and familiarity were placed in opposition using Jacoby, L. L., Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 513–541 (1991), two-list exclusion paradigm with HF and LF words. Exclusion errors to LF words exceeded those to HF words at fast deadlines, whereas the reverse occurred at slow deadlines. In Experiments 2 and 3, false alarms to HF nonpresented lures were higher than to LF nonpresented lures, indicating the use of baseline familiarity for totally new items. Combined, these results indicate that in addition to baseline familiarity and recollection, a third process involving the assessment of a relative change in familiarity is involved in recognition performance. Both relative changes in familiarity and recollection processes have distinct time courses and are engaged when there is diagnostic list information available, whereas baseline familiarity is used when there is no diagnostic information available (e.g., for nonpresented lure items).

A behavioral database for masked form priming

Reading involves a process of matching an orthographic input with stored representations in lexical memory. The masked priming paradigm has become a standard tool for investigating this process. Use of existing results from this paradigm can be limited by the precision of the data and the need for cross-experiment comparisons that lack normal experimental controls. Here, we present a single, large, high-precision, multicondition experiment to address these problems. Over 1,000 participants from 14 sites responded to 840 trials involving 28 different types of orthographically related primes (e.g., castfe–CASTLE) in a lexical decision task, as well as completing measures of spelling and vocabulary. The data were indeed highly sensitive to differences between conditions: After correction for multiple comparisons, prime type condition differences of 2.90 ms and above reached significance at the 5% level. This article presents the method of data collection and preliminary findings from these data, which included replications of the most widely agreed-upon differences between prime types, further evidence for systematic individual differences in susceptibility to priming, and new evidence regarding lexical properties associated with a target word’s susceptibility to priming. These analyses will form a basis for the use of these data in quantitative model fitting and evaluation and for future exploration of these data that will inform and motivate new experiments.

Interpolated task effects on direct and mediated false recognition: effects of initial recall, recognition, and the ironic effect of guessing.

In two experiments, participants studied two types of word lists. Direct lists were taken from the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (e.g., water, bridge, run) and contained words directly related to a nonpresented critical item (CI; e.g., river, Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Mediated lists (e.g., faucet, London, jog) contained words related to the CI through a nonpresented mediator. After each study list, participants completed either a recall test, a recall test with a warning about the CI, arithmetic problems, or a recognition test, or they guessed the CI. On a final recognition test, both warning and guessing decreased direct false recognition but increased mediated false recognition, an ironic effect of guessing. An initial recognition test also increased final mediated false recognition. We argue that warning and guessing tasks strengthened associative pathways to the CI, increased the accessibility of associated mediators, and increased monitoring for the CI at test. Increased monitoring was able to reduce CIs from direct, but not mediated, lists.

The effects of healthy aging on the mnemonic benefit of survival processing

A number of studies have shown that information is remembered better when it is processed for its survival relevance than when it is processed for relevance to other, non-survival-related contexts. Here we conducted three experiments to investigate whether the survival advantage also occurs for healthy older adults. In Experiment 1, older and younger adults rated words for their relevance to a grassland survival or moving scenario and then completed an unexpected free recall test on the words. We replicated the survival advantage in two separate groups of younger adults, one of which was placed under divided-attention conditions, but we did not find a survival advantage in the older adults. We then tested two additional samples of older adults using a between- (Exp. 2) or within- (Exp. 3) subjects design, but still found no evidence of the survival advantage in this age group. These results suggest that, although survival processing is an effective encoding strategy for younger adults, it does not provide the same mnemonic benefit to healthy elders.

Priming the holiday spirit: Persistent activation due to extraexperimental experiences

The concept of activation is a critical component of many models of cognition. A key characteristic of activation is that recent experience with a concept or stimulus increases the accessibility of the corresponding representation. The extent to which increases in accessibility occur as a result of experiences outside of laboratory settings has not been extensively explored. In the present study, we presented lexical stimuli associated with different holidays and festivities over the course of a year in a lexical decision task. When stimulus meaning and time of testing were congruent (e.g., leprechaun in March), response times were faster and accuracy greater than when meaning and time of test were incongruent (e.g., leprechaun in November). Congruency also benefited performance on a surprise free recall task of the items presented earlier in the lexical decision task. The discussion focuses on potential theoretical accounts of this heightened accessibility of time-of-the-year-relevant concepts.