Slater E. Newman

Context effects in paired-associate learning as a function of element-sharing among stimulus terms

Summary This experiment tested the hypothesis that the tendency for the dominant response in the final hierarchy for a stimulus term to be to its context element is a direct function of the number of primary elements shared by the term with other stimulus terms in the list. The data were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis. Additional effects of element-sharing and context elements are discussed.

Braille learning: Effects of symbol size

Learning the name for braille symbols was facilitated by the presence of large symbols on study trials when standard-size symbols were present on test trials, and by the presence of large braille symbols on test trials. These effects were found to be independent of the discriminability of the set of items for which the names were to be learned.

Some Tests of the Encoding Specificity and Semantic Integration Hypotheses

The encoding specificity hypothesis of Thomson and Tulving, as stated in 1970, holds that only those cues that have been present at encoding will be effective retrieval cues. In each of eight experiments, recall was generally best when the retrieval context matched the encoding context, thus supporting the hypothesis. The hypothesis was not supported, however, in several experiments in which, under a wide range of conditions, recall was better when strong extralist retrieval cues were present than when no retrieval cues (Experiments 2-7) or when weak extralist cues were present at retrieval (Experiment 8). These results were, however, accommodated by Tulving and Thomsons encoding specificity principle of 1973 combined with the assumption that the strong cues present at retrieval were also present at encoding. Finally, results from several of these experiments indicated, contrary to Baker and Santas semantic integration hypothesis, that the facilitation of recall deriving from the presence at retrieval of strong extralist cues was independent of the degree to which a target word and its cue word were integrated.

Encoding specificity vs associative continuity

When target words were accompanied on the study trial by weakly associated cue words, recall was better when the same weak cues or strongly associated cue words were present on the recall test than when no cue words were present. The results for the comparison of the strong-cue and no-cue groups do not replicate those reported by Thomson and Tulving (1970, Experiment 2) and support an associative continuity rather than an encoding specificity position.

The Effects of Set Size on Learning an Item in the Set

To test the prediction from generalization theory that the ease of learning an item will be inversely related to the size of the set of which it is a member, 80 subjects were exposed to a serially presented list of pairs for 15 trials. Of the pairs, 1, 3, 7, or all 14 of them were printed in red, and the remaining pairs in black. The prediction was not fully supported. If the reduction of generalization is a process involved in the von Restorff effect, the results of this experiment suggest that it is not the only one.

Speed of oral and written responding

Subjects were given three trials to speak and to write as fast as they could both the alphabet and a set of two-digit numbers. The speed of oral responding was approximately six syllables per second for letters and seven syllables per second for digits. The speed for writing was approximately two items per second for both digits and letters. Correlations between tasks within the same mode were all significant (p <.01); correlations between modes on the same task were usually not. Implications for research in verbal learning and memory are discussed.

Multitrial free recall: Effects of clustered presentation, element-sharing and instructions

Two experiments are reported in which Ss were given 40 free-recall trials to learn a list of 9 CCC trigrams. In Exp. I, clustered (compared with separated) presentation of items from the same class was found to facilitate performance. Acquisition was not affected by element-sharing (i.e., formal similarity) between items of the same class. In Exp. II clustered presentation again facilitated performance. Though the effect did not occur when Ss were told about the structure of the list and were instructed to recall the items in clusters, it did occur when (as in Exp. I) Ss were not given such instructions.

Does Recoding Interfering Material Improve Recall

In 4 experiments, the authors attempted to replicate an improvement in recall of target memories produced by a post-learning clue enabling participants to reorganize and segregate interfering material, as shown by G. H. Bower and T. Mann (1992). The 1st three experiments studied retroactive interference (RI) in free recall of an initial word list after participants were informed post-learning of a way to categorize a second, interfering list. In each case, the reorganizing clue failed to reduce RI. In the 4th experiment, interference during serial recall of an initial list of letters from a 2nd list was examined. Again, the reorganizing clue given after learning failed to reduce RI. Clearly, if the post-information effect is genuine, then better experimental arrangements will be required to demonstrate it more reliably.

Braille learning: One modality is sometimes better than two

On study trials, subjects examined braille symbols (for the letters A-J or K-T) visually, haptically, or under one of two bimodality conditions in which use of one or both modalities was possible. All subjects were tested haptically. Performance was best for the visual group, next best for the two bimodality groups, and poorest for the haptic group. These results are to some extent interpretable using Freides’ (1974) modality-adeptness hypothesis.

Response speed for easy- and hard-to-pronounce trigrams

Two experiments compared the time to spell aloud easy-to-pronounce (EP) and hard-to-pronounce (HP) trigrams. In Exp. I, 6 EP or HP trigrams were exposed at one time, and S read them aloud as fast as he could. In Exp. II, each trigram was presented alone. In each experiment EP trigrams took less time to spell than HP trigrams. The difference is probably not large enough to account for the effects of response-term pronunciability on performance during paired-associate training.