Trying harder may disrupt cue utilisation

Abstract

Cue depreciation refers to an inhibitory effect in fragment cueing induced by revealing a fragment gradually rather than all at once. Thus far, the effect has been observed only with test words that have been primed in some way. In Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study, even with equal priming for all words, inhibition arises with low-frequency words defined as “challenging” but not with high-frequency words defined as “easy”, and with “remember” instructions (explicit memory task) but not with “complete with any word” instructions (implicit memory task). In Experiments 3 and 4, inhibition arises with unprimed words when subjects believe discovery of such words to be correlated with intelligence or to afford more points. Cue depreciation thus appears to be influenced, rather than by priming per se, by the importance attached to the completion of fragments and “trying harder”.