The mental representation of countries

Three studies were conducted to describe adults’ knowledge of the countries of the world. Undergraduates from a selective liberal arts college recognised nearly two-thirds of nations, and about one-third were produced in a free-recall task. The use of information related to countries’ locations was an important determinant of order of recall. Contiguity in free-recall output, responses in a free-association task, and the prediction of recall from recognition also provided evidence of other relations between countries, including semantic and phonetic links and membership in groups of countries. The number of times a country was mentioned in the news was a consistent predictor of recognition and recall. The relative prosperity, population density, and geographic area of countries also influenced recall.     

遗忘症患者外显与内隐记忆分离的实验研究：自由回忆与再认任务

采用WMS－CR和MMSE筛选了9名遗忘症患者,采用自由回忆和再认两项任务观察了他们及正常对照组的外显记忆。结果发现：遗忘症患者两项外显记忆任务操作呈分离现象,自由回忆任务操作明显受损,再认任务的操作尽管较对照组低,但与对照组差异未达显著性水平。推论;①外显记忆受患者损伤的颞叶或间脑结构调节。②再认任务至少包含两种性质不同的潜在加工过程,一种为意识性重组加工,另一种为无意识自动加工,两者相互独立地贡献再认任务的操作。正常人意识性重组加工的贡献占优势,掩盖了无意识的作用。遗忘症患者意识性重组加工损伤,无意识自动加工部分代偿作用。③先前研究未对遗忘症患者进行认知功能的筛选,患者对再认障碍可能源于其他认知功能障碍,而非记忆障碍之故。     

The Perception of Mechanical Vibration: III. The Frequency Function

Three studies of male and female undergraduates examined the effects of incidental orienting tasks on the free recall of concrete nouns. In Experiments 1 (between-Ss design N = 53) and 2 (within-Ss design N = 54) semantic orienting tasks resulted in recall that was equal to or higher than recall following intentional learning. Nonsemantic orienting tasks produced poorest recall. In Experiment 3 (N = 59), Ss performed a word recognition task between two free-recall trials. The target and distractor words were either acoustically, orthographically, or semantically related or were unrelated to each other. On the second free-recall trial, recall was highest for target words that had been paired with semantically related distractors. The results of the three experiments add to the growing support for a levels-of-processing model of memory.     

Recognition failures and free-recall failures: Implications for the relation between recall and recognition

Experiments showing that in cued recall subjects can recall words that they had previously failed to recognize have been taken to refute generate-recognize theories of recall, for those theories predict that recall is dependent on recognition. None of these experiments, however, has provided an appropriate test of Bahrick’s (1970, 1979) generate-recognize theory, which explicitly refers to words that are accessible to cued recall but not to free recall, that is, tofree-recall failures. When the experimental procedure was modified so as to provide tests of this theory, no evidence was found of any greater dependency between recall and recognition of free-recall failures than between recall and recognition overall. Free-recall failures do not, therefore, constitute any exception to many previous experimental findings that conform with the Tulving-Wiseman law, and so the account offered by Bahrick’s generate-recognize theory may be rejected. The results also suggest an explanation for some other conflicting evidence on whether recall and recognition are dependent or independent.     

Memorability as a measure of processing: a unit analysis of prose and list learning

The percentage of subjects recalling each unit in a list or prose passage is considered as a dependent measure. When the same units are recalled in different tasks, processing is assumed to be the same; when different units are recalled, processing is assumed to be different. Two collections of memory tasks are presented, one for lists and one for prose. The relations found in these two collections are supported by an extensive reanalysis of the existing prose memory literature. The same set of words were learned by 13 different groups of subjects under 13 different conditions. Included were intentional free-recall tasks, incidental free recall following lexical decision, and incidental free recall following ratings of orthographic distinctiveness and emotionality. Although the nine free-recall tasks varied widely with regard to the amount of recall, the relative probability of recall for the words was very similar among the tasks. Imagery encoding and recognition produced relative probabilities of recall that were different from each other and from the free-recall tasks. Similar results were obtained with a prose passage. A story was learned by 13 different groups of subjects under 13 different conditions. Eight free-recall tasks, which varied with respect to incidental or intentional learning, retention interval, and the age of the subjects, produced similar relative probabilities of recall, whereas recognition and prompted recall produced relative probabilities of recall that were different from each other and from the free-recall tasks. A review of the prose literature was undertaken to test the generality of these results. Analysis of variance is the most common statistical procedure in this literature. If the relative probability of recall of units varied across conditions, a units by condition interaction would be expected. For the 12 studies that manipulated retention interval, an average of 21% of the variance was accounted for by the main effect of retention interval, 17% by the main effect of units, and only 2% by the retention interval by units interaction. Similarly, for the 12 studies that varied the age of the subjects, 6% of the variance was accounted for by the main effect of age, 32% by the main effect of units, and only 1% by the interaction of age by units.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

What can we learn about immediate memory from the development of children's free recall?

We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.     

Having shaved a kiwi fruit: Memory of unfamiliar subject-performed actions

Summary In an experiment with young and elderly adults, memory of unfamiliar actions performed by the subjects was compared with memory of actions low and high in familiarity, in order further to assess the role of a knowledge base as regards memory material encoded by enacting. Memory of similar actions encoded verbally was also assessed. The findings showed that the type of encoding, as well as familiarity, determined free-recall memory performance. The highest free-recall scores were found for familiar actions encoded by performance, in both an immediate and a delayed free-recall test. Recognition memory was also enhanced by enacting, whereas the influence of familiarity with an item upon recognition performance was limited to actions encoded verbally. The role of familiarity in recognition performance of actions encoded verbally was reversed compared with that in free recall, in that recognition of unfamiliar actions was most effective. Moreover, age-related memory deficits were found in this study. Elderly adults showed a consistently lower level of performance than younger subjects in both types of free-recall test and in the recognition test. This effect of age was found regardless of the type of encoding, demonstrating that age-related memory differences are not compensated by motor encoding. The age effect was also found regardless of familiarity with the items, and was most significant for unfamiliar actions. This demonstrates that elderly adults have particular difficulty in processing unfamiliar memory material.The experiment was conducted as part of the fulfillment of the requirements for obtaining the diploma degree of Maria Schumacher. Portions of this paper were presented at the 32nd Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen, Regensburg, April 1990.     

Rate of forgetting in amnesia: II. Recall and recognition of word lists at different levels of organization.

Amnesic rate of decline of free recall, cued recall, and recognition of word lists with different levels of organization was investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, it was found that amnesic free recall of semantically related word lists declined at an accelerated rate, whereas free recall of lists of unrelated words declined at a normal rate. Cued recall and recognition performance of both kinds of word lists appeared to decline at a normal rate. In Experiment 2, the results of the free-recall and recognition conditions were replicated using an improved experimental design. The observed amnesic forgetting pattern is interpreted as arising from an impairment in consolidation of long-term memory for complex associations between 2 or more items and their study context that is caused by extended hippocampal system lesions.     

The development of attribute dominance in the knowledge base

Two cuing, free-recall studies were conducted to test Bach and Underwood's (1970) hypothesis that acoustic encoding is dominant among second graders and semantic encoding is dominant among sixth graders. When retrieval cues were presented with to-be-remembered items at both input and output (Experiment 1), and when cues were presented only at output (Experiment 2), semantic cues were more efficient in elevating recall than were acoustic cues for both second and sixth graders. When these and other results generally found using recognition, sorting, incidental learning, and free-recall experimental designs are compared, it seems plausible that item presentation and memory-testing formats interact with age, and that these factors account for the different patterns of attribute dominance found in the literature. The knowledge base cannot be understood by focusing on either subject or task analyses, but only by focusing on interactions between subject and task variables as they change over time. The educational implications for young grade-school children are discussed.     

Facilitation of recall with intralist cues: Time-dependent characteristics of cued recall

List items were given as retrieval cues in a free-recall experiment which factorially combined the presence or absence of cues with the amount of time allowed for use of each cue (10 sec or 30 sec). A categorizable list of 75 randomly presented words was learned, and 48 h later a free-recall test trial was given, followed by a final memory search task. During the final task, cued subjects received words from categories that had not been recalled during the free-recall test. With both time intervals, cued subjects recalled more words than noncued subjects, indicating that random presentation of categorized words does not necessarily preclude the observation of a cueing effect with list items, as has been reported previously. The composition of recall, whether from previously recalled or nonrecalled categories, varied as a function of time for both groups. The results were interpreteod in terms of retrieval strategies employed by cued and noncued subjects and the effect of time on these strategies.     

Locus of control and the age difference in free recall from episodic memory.

The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall performance. The results suggest that a differential memory organization deficit may underlie the age differences in free recall among individuals varying in LOC when they are performing an intentional learning task. This deficit is discussed in terms of a reduced-inhibition account of cognitive aging.     

Effects of environmental context manipulated by the combination of place and task on free recall

Three experiments, using a 2 (study context) x 2 (test context) between-subjects design, were conducted to examine the effects of environmental context manipulated by the combination of two contextual elements, place and task, on free recall. Undergraduates individually studied nouns and received a free-recall test, with a 10-minute filled retention interval. The contexts were manipulated by the combination of task and place in Experiment 1, by place alone in Experiment 2, and by task alone in Experiment 3. For the manipulation of place and task, two perceptually distinctive places and two distinctive tasks (a calculation task and a fine-motor task) were used. Tasks were imposed before and after studying target items and before a free-recall test. Significant environmental-context effects were yielded in Experiment 1, but not in the other experiments. The implications of the results are discussed.     

Self-esteem and formality of instructions as variables influencing selective recall

The present study attempted to determine whether the selective recall phenomenon was related to self-esteem. The selective recall phenomenon is the inferior recall of interrupted tasks in a formal (ego-threatening) situation, relative to the recall of interrupted tasks in an informal (nonthreatening) situation. Two hundred eleven college students responded to a self-esteem inventory and then were given formal or informal instructions. They then worked on 16 tasks, and were interrupted on 8 but were allowed to complete 8. Finally, an unexpected free-recall test of task solutions was administered. Only subjects low in self-esteem exhibited the selective recall pattern. It was hypothesized that in a formal situation, interrupted activities were viewed as failures. It was assumed that the recall of failures was particularly threatening to low-self-esteem subjects, resulting in selective forgetting or selective storage of solutions. It was also found that all subjects recalled solutions from completed tasks more frequently than solutions from interrupted tasks. Several interpretations for the latter phenomenon were suggested, including a dual mechanism involving both motivation persistence and motivation reduction, and the incorporation of information into a self-referent schema.     

The function of one-word mediators in the recall of word pairs

The problem of demonstrating that natural language mediators play a role in learning and are not epiphenomena resulting from learning is an important problem in cognitive learning theories. Using a cued-recall and a free-recall learning task, Ss were requested to add a one-word mediator to some of the pairs of concrete nouns presented, The mediated pairs were learned better than the control pairs in both tasks. Both words were recalled only when the mediator was also recalled. Also, one-word mediators were the most effective recall cues and were the best recalled words in free recall. A two-stage learning model adequately described the data. However, a counterargument can be made which considers the mediator to be a high associate of one of the words presented and actually has no direct link to the other presented word. A possible experimental resolution of the problem is discussed.     

Encoding processes in recognition and recall

The present experiments demonstrate that picture-word stimuli are differentially encoded in anticipation of a recognition test than in anticipation of a free-recall test. Subjects perform better on the retention test of which they have been informed, and different information from the stimuli is used to pass each test. These findings cannot be attributed to stimulus selection nor to pure pictorial encoding in anticipation of recognition and pure verbal encoding in anticipation of recall. Recognition is enhanced by encoding which integrates the details within each item while recall is enhanced by encoding which interrelates the items of a list.     

Sex differences in working memory

In two separate studies, sex differences in modal-specific elements of working memory were investigated by utilizing words and pictures as stimuli. Groups of men and women performed a free-recall task of words or pictures in which 20 items were presented concurrently and the number of correct items recalled was measured. Following stimulus presentation, half of the participants were presented a verbal-based distraction task. On the verbal working-memory task, performance of men and women was not significantly different in the no-distraction condition. However, in the distraction condition, women's recall was significantly lower than their performance in the no-distraction condition and men's performance in the distraction condition. These findings are consistent with previous research and point to sex differences in cognitive ability putatively resulting from functional neuroanatomical dissimilarities. On the visual working-memory task, women showed significantly greater recall than men. These findings are inconsistent with previous research and underscore the need for further research.     

Part-whole transfer and organization in children's and adults' multitrial free recall

The effect of age-related differnces in the use of recall organization on the amount of recall and the properties of recall-acquisition patterns obtained in a multitrial part-whole transfer task was investigated among subjects in grade levels 1, 4, 7, and college (ages 6.5, 9.6, 12.6, and 19.7 years, respectively). Half of the subjects receiving relevant and irrelevant part lists sorted stimuli before recall trials; other subjects studied the items as they were presented, one at a time. Relevant part list learning was equally facilitative for all age groups regardless of presentation condition, and despite the greater amounts of recall organization found among college subjects. All age groups showed trial-to-trial improvements in whole-list recall; however, only the college subjects showed corresponding improvements in clustering, and all age groups had high rates of fluctuation in the composition of their recall from trial to trial. It was concluded that while even the limited amounts of spontaneous recall organization found among children are sufficient to enhance recall, organization is not a necessary condition for recall improvement and not the primary means by which children throughout the preformal-operations period increase their recall of unrelated stimuli over trials in a free-recall task.     

Intact retention in acute alcohol amnesia

Research on alcohol amnesia has focused on memory processes that are disrupted during intoxication. The present experiment examined the possibility that certain memory processes might be resistant to the amnesic effects of alcohol. Intoxicated and sober subjects studied a list of 29 words. They were then given one of three different retention tests: free recall, identification of degraded words based on the procedure used by Warrington and Weiskrantz (1970), and yes/no recognition. As expected, free recall was significantly impaired by alcohol intoxication. In contrast, in the identification test, intoxicated subjects benefited to the same degree as sober subjects from prior exposure to the items. The two groups did not differ in immediate recognition memory. The results of the free-recall and identification tasks are similar to findings with chronic amnesic patients and suggest that perceptual fluency is not affected by alcohol, whereas elaborative processes supporting recall are particularly sensitive to disruption during intoxication. The failure to find recognition impairment at the level of intoxication used in this study distinguishes temporary alcohol amnesia from chronic amnesia.     

The moderating effects of stimulus valence and arousal on memory suppression

This study examined the separate and combined effects of stimulus valence and arousal on retrieval inhibition. Participants performed Anderson and Green's (2001) memory suppression task with stimuli varying across dimensions of valence and arousal. Memory was tested through free and cued recall as well as speeded recognition. Results showed that both stimulus valence and arousal influenced the extent to which participants successfully inhibited retrieval, but not in the ways anticipated. Specifically, the strongest inhibition effects were for highly arousing, pleasant words. In addition, unpleasant stimuli that were suppressed were better recalled during both cued and free-recall tasks than pleasant stimuli that were suppressed. Across all tests of memory performance, there were no significant differences between the experimental conditions for highly arousing, unpleasant words. The implications of these findings are discussed.