William P. Wallace

Recognition failure of recallable words and recognizable words.

Three experiments are reported introducing variations in testing mode and cuing context into the general procedures used to demonstrate recognition failure of recallable words. Recognition failure of recognizable words can be demonstrated when a cued recognition test replaces the cued recall test in these general procedures. Also, recall failure of recallable words can be demonstrated if an uncued recall test replaces the initial uncued recognition test. If the initial recognition test involves cued recognition, then both the recognition failure of recallable words and the recognition failure of recognizable words are attenuated. Recognition failure of recognizable words was also present when distractors were not used in recognition testing. It was concluded that recognition-failure phenomena represent a special class of context effects; that is, they simply result from removing original study cues from one testing context and restoring them in a second testing context. It was suggested that theories of memory that recognize that memory performance may be sensitive to testing context are not contraindicated by the demonstration of recognition failure of recallable words.

Consistency of emission order in free recall

Phenomena of clustering and subjective organization in free recall were incorporated within an associative explanatory framework. Both are defined by consistency of recall orders. Recall-order consistency was assumed to reflect the organization S imposes upon material he is required to memorize. Contiguity of experience (“thinking” about items together during the experiment) was proposed as the dominant force underlying the consistency in recall order. According to the contiguity principle, items experienced together will be recalled together. The major determinants of specific contiguity relations identified were the arrangement of items during study trials by E , the arrangement of items during test trials by S , and modifications of prior input and output orders which result from rehearsal and mediating activities on the part of S .

Incidental learning: The influence of associative similarity and formal similarity in producing false recognition

The present study was designed to test whether the occurrence of implicit associative responses (IARs) is primed by instructions to learn. There were two kinds of experimental (E) words in a 200-word list: E words presumed to have been elicited as IARs by earlier list words, and E words formally similar (FS) to earlier list words, but presumed not to have been elicited as IARs. The number of times S s reported that E words had been presented earlier (false positives) was compared with the number of false positives to control words. The results indicated that absence of instructions to learn did not reduce IAR occurrence below the level to which it was reduced by engaging in the orienting task. That is, S s performing the orienting task did not show increased error rates for E words presumed to have been elicited earlier as IARs. Performing the orienting task was responsible for interference for the FS class. It was suggested that this latter finding occurred because S s performing the orienting task responded to the words in the same way it is assumed S s respond to nonsense material.

Are false recognitions influenced by prerecognition processing

Lexical activation is a core process in models of spoken word recognition. Specific words activated are candidates, with degree of activation determined by the match with sensory information. Once identified, lexical activation shifts to provide a meaningful representation, normally through activation of semantically related words. Activated words are assumed to acquire familiarity as a result of being activated, providing a basis for memories, both real and imagined. Three experiments showed a direct relationship between number of false recognitions and their presumed degree of activation. Results converge with those from spoken word recognition in implicating lexical activation during early stages of processing. For recognition memory, the message is that prerecognition lexical processing should be included in the memory equation.

Presentation duration and false recall for semantic and phonological associates

Two experiments examined false recall for lists of semantically and phonologically associated words as a function of presentation duration. Veridical recall increased with long exposure durations for all lists. For semantically associated lists, false recall increased from 20-250 ms, then decreased. There was a high level of false recall with 20 ms durations for phonologically associated lists (47 and 44% for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), which declined as duration increased. In Experiment 2, for lists presented at 20 and 50 ms rates, false recall given zero correct recall was observed frequently, suggesting that conscious recollection of studied words was not necessary for phonological false memory. Differences between phonologically and semantically associated lists were consistent with a feature integration model based on automatic initial processing of phonetic features of words.

Reward magnitude and number of training trials as joint factors in extinction

Reward magnitudes of 1, 2, 4 and 8 pellets (.045 gm) were combined factorially with 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 reinforced training trials for a total of 300 rats in a straight runway. Extinction speed was a monotonic increasing function of number of training trials and also tended to increase with reward magnitude, but the latter effect was not significant. There was no interaction between reward magnitude and number of trials and no indication of nonmonotonicity for either variable.

Implicit word activation during prerecognition processing: False recognition and remember/know judgments

Recognition memory for spoken words is influenced by phonetic resemblance between test words and items presented during study. Presentation of derived nonwords (e.g., /d/ransparent ortransparen/d/) on a study list produces a higher than normal false recognition rate to base words (e.g.,transparent). Test words that share beginning phonemes with studied nonwords have more false recognitions than do those that share ending phonemes. The latter difference has been attributed to familiarity resulting from prerecognition processing of spoken stimuli. As a listener hears /træns/, “transparent” may be activated as a potential solution. In the present experiments, we minimized contributions of postrecognition processing to this phenomenon by presenting a semantically unrelated test word (transportation) that was also expected to be activated during prerecognition stages of processing. The results indicated that false recognition was increased for words presumed to be activated only during prerecognition processing.Remember (R) andknow (K) judgments revealed that the majority of studied words were R, and the majority of false recognitions were K. The lowest proportion of R judgments occurred for test words that were not activated during postrecognition processing (e.g.,transportation and control words).

Implicit responses in incidental learning

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the role of implicit associative response (IAR) occurrence in incidental learning. Lists of conceptually related words were presented at a rapid rate followed by a test of free recall. Although differences among groups were small, recall scores and clustering scores consistently favored the intentional learners. It was suggested that the procedures which define incidental learning result in a reduction in IAR occurrence.

False recognition produced by laboratory-established associative responses

Sixty-four Ss learned one of two paired-associate (PA) lists (A-B or C-B) and then transferred to a 100-word recognition list (RL). During RL Ss were required to indicate as each word was shown whether or not that word had been shown earlier in RL. The stimulus words from one of the PA lists (A words) appeared in the first half of RL. Both the natural language associates of the A words (A′) and the PA response words (B) appeared in the second half of RL. There was a significant interaction indicating more errors were made to B words than to A′ words following A-B learning, but the opposite obtained following C-B learning.

Divided attention and prerecognition processing of spoken words and nonwords

Three recognition memory experiments examined phonemic similarity and false recognition under conditions of divided attention. The manipulation was presumed to have little effect on automatic, perceptual influences of memory. Prior research demonstrated that false recognition of a test word (e.g.,discrepancy) was higher if the study list included a nonword derived from the future test word by changing a phoneme near the end of the item (e.g.,discrepan/l/y) relative to an early phoneme change (e.g.,/l/iscrepancy). The difference has been attributed to automatic, implicit activation of test words during prerecognition processing of related nonwords. Three experiments demonstrated that the latechange condition also contributed to higher false recognition rates with divided attention at encoding. Dividing attention disrupted recognition memory of studied words in Experiments 1 and 3. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance for an interpretation emphasizing the automatic, implicit activation of candidate words that occurs in the course of identifying spoken words and nonwords.