On the measurement of storage and retrieval contributions to memory development

We report two free recall experiments and a cued recall experiment in which a new two-stage model was used to obtain numerical measurements of age changes in various aspects of storage and retrieval. The subjects in all three experiments were 7-year-olds (second graders) and 11-year-olds (sixth graders). The major findings in the free recall experiment were that getting a trace into storage posed less of a problem for elementary schoolers than learning how to get it out on test trials, that retrieval development is more rapid during the elementary school years than storage development, and that the superiority of older children's storage and retrieval abilities tends to become more pronounced as learning progresses. A similar pattern of results was obtained under different conditions in the cued recall experiment.     

Stages-of-learning analysis of developmental interactions in memory,with illustrations from developmental interactions in picture-word effects

Although Age × Treatment interactions have been widely viewed as key results in theories of memory development, most examples of such results (e.g., Age × Treatment interactions in the effects of item concreteness, item elaboration, and organizational context) have been identified in list-learning experiments where children of different ages receive a small, fixed number of study-test cycles on the target list. A stages-of-learning analysis reveals that such designs confound a treatment's potential interactions with age and its potential interactions with stage of learning. The analysis also reveals specific situations in which such designs will produce converging, diverging, and crossover Age × Treatment interactions even though the treatment does not interact with age in any way. A series of experiments is reported in which a mathematical model that incorporates stages-of-learning distinctions is applied to the well-known interaction between age and item concreteness (pictures versus words) in cued recall. Although a diverging Age × Treatment interaction has been observed in previous research, it was found that there are at least four different interactions between the picture-word manipulation and age; (a) a diverging interaction at storage that operates throughout elementary school; (b) a diverging interaction localized within retrieval learning and operating during the first half of the elementary school; (c) a converging interaction localized within retrieval learning and operating during the second half of elementary school; and (d) a diverging interaction localized within retrieval performance and operating throughout elementary school.     

Syntactic facilitation of children's associative learning: An instructional effect

An experiment is reported in which connective recall, as well as noun recall, was obtained in a pair-associate learning, syntactic facilitation paradigm. Dfferences in the pattern of noun and connective recall, and a partial independence in the two types of recall, were obtained. These results were interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis that experimenter-supplied verb links facilitate noun pair learning by serving an instructional role, indicating to the subject how a pair might be coded.     

Free recall and retrieval speed of categorized items by kindergarten children

Kindergarten Ss were presented with 16 pictorial items in four category sets or a partially random ordem with one item from each category composing the four presentation sets. The pictures were presented either on conceptually related background pictures or on white backgrounds. The categorically grouped presentation facilitated free recall performance, both in terms of number of items recalled and the speed with which the items were recalled, and increased the amount of clustering in recall. Categorical clustering in recall was associated with shorter within- than between-category intervals and for those Ss who recalled items from each of four categories successively, the over-all temporal pattern in recall closely approximated that found with adults. No background effects were found.     

Perceived qualifications,resource abundance,and resentment about deprivation

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that perceptions of being well qualified for a desired object will decrease individuals' resentment about deprivation when opportunities for obtaining the object are good (i.e., when the resource is abundant), but increase resentment when the resource is scarce. In the first experiment, unemployed nurses participated in a survey of the job situation for nurses. The initial questions in the survey were designed to manipulate respondents' perceptions of (a) their qualifications for employment, by affecting their perceived similarity to employed nurses (similar vs different), and (b) the job potential for unemployed nurses (improve vs worsen). In the second experiment, subjects competed over a number of trials with other participants for money that they had previously been promised. Some of the subjects had practiced the task ahead of time (qualified subjects), whereas others had not (unqualified subjects). In addition, the number of payments that were allegedly available was varied (many vs few). In both experiments, the manipulation of good qualifications reduced resentment when the resource was abundant, but did not significantly affect resentment when the resource was scarce. The implications of these results for understanding the determinants of resentment about deprivation are discussed.     

Effects of spacing repetitions on children's memory

Two experiments examined the effect of spacing repetitions within a word list on the free recall performance of elementary school children. In the first experiment, spacing repetitions facilitated recall, and the function relating recall of repeated items to the spacing between repetitions was the same throughout the age range investigated (first, third, and sixth graders). But, the function for these elementary school children reached asymptote at a much shorter spacing than the function typically reported for adults. The second experiment was designed to test an encoding variability explanation of spaced-repetition effects in elementary school children. Results for both third- and sixth-grade children were consistent with the hypothesis that differential encoding of repetitions facilitates performance and that spaced repetitions are remembered better because they are more likely to be differentially encoded. A theoretical framework was discussed that may be able to encompass both these results and another finding in the literature which indicates that differential encoding can sometimes impair rather than facilitate children's memory performance.     

Development of organization in recall: A stages-of-learning analysis

An experiment is reported in which the effects of taxonomic organization on 7-year-old and 11-year-old children's free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists were examined. The data were analyzed using a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivers estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. The results indicated that for the Grade 2 children providing a category label at the time of recall primarily enhanced storage whereas increasing the number of categories primarily enhanced retrieval. For Grade 6 children, on the other hand, the use of category labels to cue recall primarily enhanced retrieval, whereas increasing the number of categories affected both storage and retrieval in free recall, but only retrieval in cued recall. In addition, while older children were superior to younger children at both storing and retrieving information, age differences at retrieval were generally larger than those at storage.     

The proper role of clusters in mathematical models of continuous recall

Previous research has shown that the number of words cumulatively recalled (N) at time (t) is a negatively accelerated function that reaches an asymptote as t → ∞. Research has also shown that the increase in N with t occurs in bursts or clusters. Several models purport to account for this cumulative recall curve in terms of cluster characteristics. The present research shows that previous models have not in fact successfully linked continuous recall to cluster characteristics. This research demonstrates that cluster models need to employ three empirical characteristics of clusters: T_b, the time between clusters; T_w, the average time between words within a cluster; and W_c, the number of words within a cluster. It is shown that these three quantities determine the cumulative recall curve, and these three quantities may in turn be characterized by four parameters. Of these four parameters, only three actually characterize the cumulative recall curve. Two parameters determine the initial slope and final asymptote of the curve, while a third parameter, which we introduce for the first time, characterizes the curve's shape. This latter parameter may be interpreted as the ratio ofthe time spent in retrieving and discarding a cluster that has been previously recalled to the amount of time spent in retrieving and outputting a newly encountered cluster. It is pointed out that previous success in fitting the cumulative recall data with a two-parameter function may be explained by the fact that this parameter lies in a restricted range about unity. Further experimental work is suggested to elucidate the behavior of this new parameter. Two models are then proposed to account for these characteristics of clusters and the shape of the recall curve.     

Authoritarianism and recall of evidence about criminal behavior

Research by Marshall (1966) suggested that high authoritarian persons might be more accurate at recalling evidence about criminal behavior than low authoritarian persons. Drawing on other research findings, Marshall's hypothesis was expanded to predict that high authoritarians would recall more about evidence relating to defendant character and low authoritarians would recall more about situational evidence. In two jury-simulation experiments the new hypothesis was confirmed.     

Self-schemas,depression, and the processing of personal information in children

Recent research in information processing has yielded evidence supporting the self-as-schema model with adults. Further self-schema research with depressed and nondepressed persons has suggested the existence of negative self-schemas in depression, lending support to a content-specificity self-schema model. The present studies were designed to investigate the applicability of the self-as-schema model to children and to examine the extent of negative self-schemas in relatively depressed children. A depth-of-processing incidental recall memory paradigm was employed with two groups of normal third- to sixth-grade children. Results supported the self-as-schema model as applied to children, even the youngest group, by indicating superior recall for words encoded under self-reference instructions, compared to semantic or structural orienting instructions. The content-specificity hypotheses were tested with relatively depressed and nondepressed children, and were supported only for the nondepressed children, who recalled mostly positive content words. The relatively depressed children did not demonstrate content specificity in their recall, showing a more “confused” pattern, and the results were discussed in terms of a developmental model of acquisition of depression vulnerability requiring repeated depressive experiences over time. Although the results were consistent with a self-schema approach, current controversies over the implications of depth-of-processing methods require further research to clarify mechanisms of enhanced self-reference recall.     

The purposes of laboratory experimentation and the virtues of deliberate artificiality

Critics of the laboratory experiment have maintained that artificiality (the intrusion into the experiment of “unrealistic” conditions) vitiates any possibility of generalizability beyond the confines of the laboratory. It is argued here that such artificiality in laboratory experimentation is a defect or flaw only within the context of verification and may be a distinct virtue in the context of discovery. Indeed it is argued that social psychological experiments may not be artificial enough when contrasted with the most fruitful experiments in the natural sciences. One purpose of an experiment may be to maximize artificiality deliberately so as to discover regularities that do not presently obtain under the “real” conditions outside the laboratory but which are capable of existing. When such observed laboratory regularities produce potentially beneficial outcomes, an attempt may be made to create the specific artificial laboratory conditions outside the laboratory to benefit mankind. This logic, exceedingly common in the natural sciences, has been virtually ignored in social psychology, even in the laboratory experiment, in favor of “realistic” reproduction of existing or reasonably plausible situations. Theoretical benefits of this additional modality of experimentation are illustrated by two recent developments in psychology.     

Coding modality vs. input modality in hypermnesia: Is a rose a rose a rose?

Recent experiments indicate that recall of pictures, unlike recall of words, may increase (hypermnesia) with time and effort. This study demonstrates that by recoding word inputs into ‘mental pictures’, i.e., images, subjects can transform inert word lists into hypermnesic ones. Thus, when word inputs are recoded into images, recall increases over time, and resembles in other respects the recall of pictures.     

The advantages of mathematical modeling over traditional methods in the analysis of category clustering

A mathematical model for the analysis of category clustering is developed and testd. The model, which can be applied to categories of any size, is an extension of a two-item statistical model developed by Batchelder and Riefer (Psychological Review, 1980, 87, 375–397), and is equivalent to their model when categories consist of two items. The model is based on a current theory of clustering which postulates that the learning of a list of category items occurs on different hierarchical levels. Two category list-learning experiments are presented, and the data from these experiments are analyzed using the general statistical model. The first experiment reveals that the probabilities of storing and retrieving a cluster increase with category size, while the learning of items as singletons decreases. The effects of within-category spacing indicate that the storage of clusters decreases while cluster retrievability increases with an increase in input spacing. In the second experiment, the storage and retrieval of clusters are shown to be unaffected by whether the presentation of items is uncued or cued with the name of the category. However, the association of items decreases and the learning of items as singletons increases with uncued presentation. In the final sections, the general statistical model is compared to other methods for the measurement of category clustering. The model is shown to be superior to numerical indices of clustering, since these measures are not based on any theory of clustering, and because unitary measures cannot capture the multiprocess nature of categorized recall. The model is also argued to have certain advantages over other mathematical models that have been applied to category clustering, since these models cannot account for situations in which a portion of the items are clustered while others are learned singularly.     

Response latency and response accuracy as measures of memory

The relationship is examined between response accuracy and response latency as measures of memory, and questions are raised concerning the value of the unidimensionality assumption often invoked in theories of memory. Three paired-associate experiments investigated the effects of the length of the retention interval, the kind of processing during incidental learning, and the number of study versus test trials during intentional learning. The findings, together with a review of selected studies in the literature, support three conclusions: (1) Latency of correct recall is not necessarily more sensitive than accuracy, (2) accuracy and latency of correct recall measure different aspects of memory, and (3) latency of correct recall and latency of incorrect recall measure different aspects of memory. The available data disconfirm the idea that any unidimensional construct (such as strength or the amount of information in memory) underlies memory performance. An explanation is offered that emphasizes the distinction between encoding and retrieval processes.     

Extraversion and reactions to cognitive inconsistency

Two studies are reported which test the hypothesis that extraverts are more tolerant of cognitive inconsistency than are introverts. The first study tested this prediction in the context of Heider's balance model. While degree of extraversion did not moderate reactions to imbalance, extraverts did show less aversion to interpersonal disagreement than introverts. When coupled with other recently published data this suggests that extraverts find arousing social situations less aversive than introverts. In support of the main hypothesis, the second experiment showed that extraverts changed their attitudes less than introverts as a result of writing an essay which was counter to their own attitude under conditions where they had high perceived freedom of choice.     

Imagery and associative memory in children

Second and sixth graders, ages 7–8 and 11–12, respectively, were presented with lists of pairs of nouns. They were asked to represent each pair in memory as a single interactive image, as two separate images, or by a control procedure. After presentation of the pairs, the children were tested either by cued or noncued recall. The difference between the interaction condition and the other conditions appeared in recall measures which reflect pairwise organization in memory (cued recall, pair recall, conditional recall probabilities, and χ²) to a much greater extent than in measures of individual item recall. The results were interpreted as supporting an imagery-organization hypothesis.     

Different memory functions for consonants and vowels

Different memory functions were obtained for consonants (C) and vowels (V) in a serial recall task. In general, the most recently heard vowels in a sequence were easier to recall than the most recently heard consonants. This effect was observed for auditorily presented sequences of CV or VC syllables, but was not observed for visually presented stimuli. The results were explained in terms of a limited capacity acoustic storage in which vowels are preserved longer than consonants. Retrieval of the last vowels from this storage was presumed to cause the vowel recency effect.     

Imitation as a function of response commonality,serial order,and vicarious punishment

The effects of response commonality, serial order of modeled responses, and vicarious punishment on young boys' recall and acceptance of 20 commodity prefereces of an adult were examined in a 2 (common dimension vs no-common dimension) × 2 (vicarious punishment vs no-vicarious consequences) × 2 (recall or acceptance test) × 5 (response-block) factorial experiment. As predicted, the presence of a common dimension resulted in improved recall of the modeled responses, vicarious punishment was more effective under common dimension than no-common dimension conditions, and a serial order effect for recall of the modeled responses was obtained. The overall pattern of results is discussed in terms of the conceptualization that imitation requires both that the observer (1) has acquired and retained the model's responses and (2) has been placed in circumstances which favor activating this learning into overt performance.