Differences in encoding for free recall vs. recognition

Three experiments examined effects of test expectancy on memory for relatively unrelated words. In Experiment I, where preliminary recall or recognition practice was given, both recall and recognition were superior when the subjects expected and had practiced for recall. Free study led to better recall and recognition than paced presentation, but did not interact with test expectancy. Experiment II demonstrated that recall was better for subjects expecting a recall vs. a recognition test in the absence of preliminary practice. In Experiment III all subjects practiced both recall and recognition prior to presentation of the critical list. Study time also was varied. With longer study, recall was better when a recall test was expected, with no test expectancy effect on recognition. There were no appreciable expectancy effects with the short study period. Self-reports and other data suggested that the critical encoding differences produced by test expectancy manipulation were quantitative in nature.     

The Relative Importance of Anticipated Test Format and Anticipated Test Difficulty on Performance

In this investigation, the relative importance of the effects of anticipated test format and anticipated test difficulty on performance was examined by simultaneously manipulating both. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that test performance was affected more by anticipated test format than by anticipated test difficulty. This suggests that the superior performance of subjects who had anticipated a recall test versus those who had anticipated a recognition test, reported here and in previous studies, is more likely to be due to anticipating a recall format than to anticipating a more difficult test. Experiment 2 showed that subjects who had anticipated a recall test studied longer than subjects who had anticipated a recognition test, even when recall tests were less difficult than recognition tests. One explanation for this finding is that subjects inaccurately monitor the relative difficulty of tests across test formats. Subjects rated recall items as more difficult than recognition items, even when recall items are actually less difficult (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that a priori metacognitive knowledge may reduce the accuracy of on-line metacognitive monitoring.     

Some factors affecting response in recognition tests

Experiments were designed to investigate some of the factors which might affect a subject's responses in a recognition test. Two experiments are described. In the first, subjects were shown 12 similar photographs. They were then given a recognition test of 12 photographs, of which a number varying from o to 12 had been shown in the original display. All the photographs were sufficiently alike to render some guessing essential. It was found that subjects tended to select approximately 50 per cent. as having been seen previously and to reject 50 per cent. When a second and similar display and recognition test followed immediately, there was a tendency for subjects to make more “yes” responses, without any improvement in accuracy. The effect of giving serial presentation first was to increase the number accepted not only in that test but also in a test using simultaneous presentation which succeeded it. It was also shown that when a correct decision was possible but difficult a positively correct response (in this case recognizing something seen before) was easier than a negatively correct one (rejecting something not seen before).

In the second experiment subjects were shown a picture and were then asked to describe it from memory. Immediately afterwards half the group was given a multiple-choice recognition test while the other half was given a single-choice recognition test. It was found that accuracy and certainty of decision varied with the nature of the choice situation. The results are discussed in relation to a theory of adaptation levels.     

The influence of interpolated recall upon recognition

An experiment was designed to show how immediate recall may affect recognition. A number of subjects were shown a picture. Some were asked to recall it and were then given a recognition test. Others were given only the recognition test after the same interval. Only 4 of the 16 subjects who had recalled it identified it; whereas 14 of the 16 others did so. A second experiment gave similar results.

Recall was constructed round dominant items of the picture. This distribution of emphasis together with the acceptance of an invented detail as genuine were the common causes of errors in subsequent recognition. Both the dominant and invented items in recall were those which became most obviously merged into an organization of related experiences and in consequence those which militated against subsequent recognition.

The recognition test was applied in two further groups of 16 subjects with a change in one of the dominant details (i.e. the wording). The number of subjects who now correctly identified the remainder of the material was 9 when there was no intermediate recall, and nil when immediate recall of the original material was interposed.     

提取方式对相继记忆效应的影响

采用学习－测验（自由回忆和再认）研究范式和事件相关电位方法,研究图形的相继记忆效应（Dm效应）。14名大学生作为研究被试,根据其测验成绩将图片分为记住和未记住两类,对相应编码过程的ERPs进行分析。结果表明：⑴行为上,再认的平均击中率显著高于自由回忆;⑵脑电活动上,在刺激出现后400~700ms编码过程中记住项目的ERPs更正于未记住项目的ERPs;同时两种测验方式Dm效应的脑区分布不同,自由回忆主要分布在额区,再认主要分布在中央区和顶区,且在500~600ms自由回忆有左侧优势。这些结果表明,两种提取方式对Dm效应有不同的影响,这一结果预示自由回忆和再认的编码过程可能有不同的神经生理机制。     

Some deleterious consequences of the act of recollection

Two experiments investigated the impact of responding to recognition test items that do not include a correct alternative. In Experiment 1, subjects who were given exclusively incorrect response alternatives were less likely than control subjects to favor the correct alternatives on a second recognition test. Analysis of subjects’ responses indicated that commitments, rather than distractor familiarity, was the main source of this effect. In Experiment 2, an impairing effect of committing to an incorrect alternative was observed even when the initial distractors were excluded from the final test. Thus, this decreased performance cannot simply be attributed to a bias toward remaining consistent. One interpretation of these results is that committing to a distractor causes subjects to remember a false detail that can interfere with their later ability to access the original information. Other potential theoretical and applied implications of these results are explored.     

Typicality and familiarity of faces

We examined context-free familiarity information as a source of the effects of face typicality upon face recognition. Experiment 1 tested memory for typical and unusual faces by (1) subjects who received an input list followed immediately by a recognition test (standard condition), (2) subjects who viewed all test faces (targets and lures) prior to the input list (prefamiliarization condition), and (3) subjects who viewed all test faces after the input list but prior to recognition (postfamiliarization condition). Although false-alarm errors in the standard condition were lower for unusual than for typical faces, this effect was reduced by postfamiliarization and was eliminated entirely by prefamiliarization. The prefamiliarization and typicality effects were replicated in Experiment 2, which showed that patterns of old judgments were compatible with the hypothesis that, although familiarity of new faces is greater if these faces are typical, the increment in familiarity that results from presentation is greater if these faces are unusual.     

Encoding in anticipation of various tests of retention

Abstract.— Subjects learned a pictorial material in anticipation of either free recall (FR), serial recall (SR), or recognition tests. A design containing all possible combinations of anticipated test and test actually given was used. SR and recognition performance was best when subjects anticipated these tests, respectively, whereas FR performance was best when an SR test was anticipated. Anticipation of recognition tended to interfere with SR performance, and vice versa. The results indicate that subjects encode pictorial material differently in anticipation of different retention tests; that this serves to facilitate or to impair performance on the anticipated and/or other retention tests in a predictable manner; and that subjects tend to use different information from the stimuli to pass recognition tests and to pass recall (FR or SR) tests.     

Encoding and use of detail information in picture recognition

Subjects participated in a yes/no picture recognition experiment in which exposure time varied from 50 to 1,000 msec at the time of initial study. Following each study trial, half of the subjects, the detail at study and test (ST) group, reported whether they had observed a detail in the picture that they thought might help in subsequent recognition. The other half of the subjects, the detail at test only (T) group, did not attempt to name details during study. All of the subjects reported at the time of each test picture whether they were basing their yes/no recognition response on a specific detail in the picture or on the picture's general familiarity. The data provided strong support for a model which assumed that (a) there is a constant probability of encoding a detail during each successive unit of time at study and (b) a detail is named at test either if it was encoded at study or with some bias probability. ST subjects showed superior recognition memory performance relative to T subjects. Within the context of the aforementioned model, this superiority stems from two sources: ST subjects encode details at a faster rate than do T subjects and an encoded detail provided a better discriminative feature for ST subjects.     

Schema anticipation in recall: memory process or report strategy?

Summary This article reports an experimental investigation testing the hypothesis that recall reports are systematically biased by the recaller's knowledge about who is to receive the recall report, while that bias is absent from a recognition test. Subjects listened to one of two versions of a story recounting John's visit to the doctor. After the story was read, subjects were asked to recall the story either with standard-recall instructions or with instructions to recall for peers, for Martians, or for a contest. In a fifth condition, subjects performed a filler activity, viz., the recall of a personal experience. After the recall test subjects were administered a recognition test. Between the groups no systematic differences in memory performance were observed in the recognition test. Recall for peers appeared to be poorer than recall in the other conditions. Subjects in the recall for a contest condition scored higher than the subjects in the other groups. Not only did groups differ with respect to bias, but there were also systematic differences in the memory or discrimination scores. The findings are discussed within the framework of schema theory.     

The effect of prior recall on multiple response recognition

Certain investigators have found that recognition is impaired when a recall test is interpolated during the retention interval. One possible explanation of this finding is that interpolated recall leads subjects to employ a more stringent recognition criterion. In the two experiments reported here, the influence of the recognition criterion was eliminated by using a multiple-response test requiring subjects to rank a recognition list consisting of old and new items. Nevertheless recall impaired subsequent recognition in both experiments, the effect being most marked for lowly ranked items. The recognition test in the first experiment was carried out in two stages. This made possible a direct examination of whether recall has an effect on the recognition criterion. No evidence for such an effect was obtained. Other ways in which recall may affect the recognition criterion are discussed.     

Using recall to reduce false recognition: diagnostic and disqualifying monitoring

Whether recall of studied words (e.g., parsley, rosemary, thyme) could reduce false recognition of related lures (e.g., basil) was investigated. Subjects studied words from several categories for a final recognition memory test. Half of the subjects were given standard test instructions, and half were instructed to use recall to reduce false recognition. Manipulation checks indicated that the latter instructions did elicit a recall-to-reject strategy. However, false recognition was selectively reduced only when all the words from a category could be recalled (Experiment 1). When longer categories were used, thereby minimizing exhaustive recall, a recall-to-reject strategy was ineffective at reducing false recognition (Experiment 2). It is suggested that exhaustively recalling a category allowed subjects to disqualify the lure as having occurred, analogous to recall-to-reject demonstrations in other tasks. In contrast, partially recalling a category did not help to diagnose the lure as nonstudied. These findings constrain theories of recall-based monitoring processes.     

Imagery effects and semantic similarity in sentence recognition memory

The idea that subjects often use imagery to discriminate semantically similar sentences was tested in three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects heard subject-verb-object sentences in the context of either a comprehension task or an image-generation task. Their memory for the sentences was tested using a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which different types of distractor sentence were used. A sentence semantically similar to the target sentence was one type; a sentence with the same subject and object nouns as the target sentence, but dissimilar in meaning, was another type; and a sentence similar in meaning to one of the stimulus sentences, but not to the target sentence, was a third type. The results showed that the image-generation instructions enhanced later recognition performance, but only for semantically similar test items. A second experiment showed that this finding only holds for high-imagery sentences containing concrete noun concepts. A third experiment demonstrated that the enhanced recognition performance could not be accounted for in terms of a semantic model of test-item discrimination. Collectively, the results were interpreted as providing evidence for the notion that subjects discriminate the semantically similar test items by elaborating the sentence encoding through image processing.     

Memorability judgments for high- and low-frequency words

Five experiments were conducted in order to examine subjects’ judgments of the memorability of high- (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words in the context of a recognition memory task. In Experiment 1, the subjects were provided study/test experience with a list of HF and LF words prior to making memorability judgments for a new list of HF and LF items. The findings were consistent with previous evidence (Greene & Thapar, 1994; Wixted, 1992) suggesting that subjects are not explicitly aware of the greater recognition memorability of LF words. Experiments 2–5 embedded the memorability judgment task within the recognition test itself. In these experiments, the subjects consistently gave higher memorability ratings to LF items. The contrast between the pattern of results found when the subjects made their judgments at the time of list presentation (Experiment 1) and that when they made their judgments during the recognition test (Experiments 2–5) is consistent with recent evidence that even seemingly highly related metamnemonic judgments (e.g., ease of learning judgments vs. judgments of learning for the same items) may be based on very different factors if they occur at different points in the study/test cycle. The present findings are also consistent with the possibility that very rapid retrieval of memorability information for HF and LF words may affect recognition decisions and may contribute to the recognition memory word frequency effect.     

Recognition failure of recallable words: free and cued recall compared

The experiment reported was conducted with the purpose of studying whether the phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words would hold for a paradigm which involves a free recall test rather than a cued recall test used in previous research. The 3×2 design used comprised two between-subjects factors: the subjects were instructed that a recognition test, a cued recall test, or a free recall test would follow the study trial, but the actual test sequence given was recognition followed by cued recall, or recognition followed by free recall. The results demonstrate that cases of recognition failure of recallable words do occur in all six conditions, but the amount of recognition failure for the recognition-free recall test sequence was less than that predicted from the Tulving & Wiseman (1975) function. In line with previous research the data for the recognition-cued recall test sequence showed the amount of recognition failure that was predicted by this function.     

The relation between recognition memory and classification learning

Two experiments investigated the relation between recognition memory and classification learning. The subjects were instructed that they would see a series of random-dot patterns and later would be asked to classify or to recognize the patterns. Following study, the subjects performed a classification task, a recognition-memory task, or both. It was found that classification-learning instructions were superior to recognition-memory instructions for the classification task, but that there was little or no effect of instructions on the recognition task. When subjects performed both recognition and classification tasks, there was no relation between saying “old” to a probe and correctly classifying it, except with old exemplars, and then only when the initial instructions had been to expect a recognition-memory test. Overall, the data show that classification and recognition can be experimentally separated. In addition, classification is often statistically independent of recognizing that items are old. These observed relations provide some constraints for the further development of models of classification learning and recognition memory.     

Change in perceptual form attenuates the use of the fluency heuristic in recognition

Four experiments (total N=295) were conducted to determine whether within-modality changes in perceptual form between the study and the test phases of an experiment would moderate the role of the fluency heuristic in recognition memory. Experiment 1 showed that a change from pictures to words reduced the role of fluency in recognition memory. In Experiment 2, the same result was found using counterfeit study lists that supposedly consisted of pictures or words. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that changes in the font used to present the study and test words also attenuated the contribution of fluency to the recognition decision when font change was manipulated between subjects, but not within subjects. Results suggest that the fluency heuristic is subject to metacognitive control, since participants' attributions of perceptual fluency depend on the perceived usefulness of fluency as a cue to recognition.     

Text recall and text recognition with and without a title

Abstract: Recall and recognition memory for a text were investigated in two conditions: in one, subjects could understand the text well because they were presented with the title of the text prior to reading it; in the other, they could not understand the text so well because they were not presented with the title. Results showed that recall was better and sentence recognition more accurate when subjects had understood the text. A 1-h delay of the memory test after reading decreased recall performance, but not recognition performance. Different memory representations may have been operating when subjects had understood the text from when they had not.