Predictability as a task demand in single-trial free recall

In a series of five single-trial free recall experiments it was demonstrated how manipulations of predictability in a list learning task caused reliable effects on the recency portions of the nominal serial position curve. Predictability was defined as knowledge of when the next item in the list should appear ( interval predictability) and knowledge of when the list should end and thus when recall could start ( signal predictability). Predictability was manipulated by varying the inter-item intervals within a list according to different "encoding functions", e.g. a successive increase (Condition I ) or decrease (Condition D ) of the inter-item intervals. Predictability was also manipulated by means of post-list recall signals. The data obtained show, that depending on how the interval and the signal predictabilities were manipulated, either Condition I or Condition D lists could be made more beneficial to the recall of recency items than lists with constant inter-item intervals (Condition C ). Previous encoding, storage and retrieval models were found not to give satisfactory accounts of the obtained recency effects. Neither could any traditional rehearsal model explain the data. Instead it is proposed that the predictability of stimuli in a list learning task explains how changes in recall of recency items come about. It was also hypothesized that the temporal demands, afforded to the subjects by the different encoding functions, explained the obtained output order variations.     

Serial recall and presentation schedule: a micro-analysis of local distinctiveness

According to temporal distinctiveness theories, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbours during presentation are more distinct and thus are recalled better. Event-based theories, which deny that elapsed time plays a role at encoding, explain isolation effects by assuming that temporal isolation provides extra time for rehearsal or consolidation of encoding. The two classes of theories can be differentiated by examining the symmetry of isolation effects: Event-based accounts predict that performance should be affected only by pauses following item presentation (because they allow time for rehearsal or consolidation), whereas distinctiveness predicts that items should also benefit from preceding pauses. The first experiment manipulated inter-item intervals and showed an effect of intervals following but not preceding presentation, in line with event-based accounts. The second experiment showed that the effect of following interval was abolished by articulatory suppression. The data are consistent with event-based theories but can be handled by time-based distinctiveness models if they allow for additional encoding during inter-item pauses.     

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.     

Direction of Report in Spatial and Verbal Serial Short term Memory

Four experiments examined the role played by item and order information in determining the effects of order of report of a sequence from short-term memory. Experiments in which list items were re-presented prior to recall so that only their order had to be reported showed no differences in performance between the forward and backward direction of report. This result was found with lists of auditory-verbal, visual-verbal, and spatial stimuli. When the list items were not re-presented, so that recall of both items and order was required, recall in the backward direction of report was significantly worse than in the forward direction of report, both in spatial and verbal tasks. The results point to the symmetry of inter-item associations, though only equivocally so, but they suggest strongly that the processes of spatial and verbal serial recall share many functional characteristics.     

The relationship between memory performance and the number of rehearsals in free recall

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between the number of rehearsals and long-term recall performance by means of an overt rehearsal procedure. Subjects were induced to concentrate their rehearsal activity on specific items in free recall tasks. In Experiment 1, both the primacy and the recency items that had received additional rehearsals were recalled with higher probability than were the ordinarily rehearsed items in immediate recall but not in final recall. Experiment 2 was designed to extend the occasions for subjects’ rehearsal by manipulating the rate of item presentation. The overall pattern of resulting data shewed that for neither recency items nor primacy items does the additional overt rehearsal reliably lead to facilitative effects on long-term recall performance. The possibility of a qualitative change in rehearsal is discussed.     

基于熟悉性的项目间语义关系再认

在项目间语义关系的熟悉性研究中, 一个关键问题是熟悉性效应依赖于哪种信息的加工, 关系概念还是抽象结构?研究通过两个实验, 借助无线索回忆再认范式(the recognition without cued recall paradigm, 简称RWCR范式)和四词类比材料, 采用混合设计, 直接分离与比较关系概念和抽象结构的加工对RWCR效应的影响。结果发现, 关系概念作为测验线索能够引发显著RWCR效应, 但仅仅学习关系概念却不能;只有学习关系概念的结构化材料时, 才能引发显著RWCR效应。该结果表明, 项目间语义关系的熟悉性过程与结构信息有关。     

Memory for Related and Unrelated Words: Further Evidence on the Influence of Semantic Factors in Immediate Serial Recall

A number of recent studies have explored the role of long-term memory factors in memory span tasks. The effects of lexicality, frequency, imageability, and word class have been investigated. The work reported in this paper examined the effect of semantic organization on the recall of short lists of words. Specifically, the influence of semantic category on immediate serial recall and the interaction of this variable with articulatory suppression was investigated in three experiments. Experiment 1 compared immediate serial recall performance when lists comprising items from the same semantic category were used (homogeneous condition) with a situation where lists held items from different semantic categories. Experiment 2 examined the same conditions with and without articulatory suppression during item presentation, and Experiment 3 reproduced these conditions with suppression occurring throughout presentation and recall. Results of all three experiments showed a clear advantage for the homogeneous condition. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the homogeneous category advantage did not depend on the articulatory loop. Furthermore, error analysis indicated that this effect was mainly attributable to better item information recall for the homogeneous condition. These results are interpreted as reflecting a long-term memory contribution to the recall stage of immediate serial recall tasks.     

Time manages interference in visual short-term memory

Emerging evidence suggests that age-related declines in memory may reflect a failure in pattern separation, a process that is believed to reduce the encoding overlap between similar stimulus representations during memory encoding. Indeed, behavioural pattern separation may be indexed by a visual continuous recognition task in which items are presented in sequence and observers report for each whether it is novel, previously viewed (old), or whether it shares features with a previously viewed item (similar). In comparison to young adults, older adults show a decreased pattern separation when the number of items between “old” and “similar” items is increased. Yet the mechanisms of forgetting underpinning this type of recognition task are yet to be explored in a cognitively homogenous group, with careful control over the parameters of the task, including elapsing time (a critical variable in models of forgetting). By extending the inter-item intervals, number of intervening items and overall decay interval, we observed in a young adult sample (N?=?35, M_age?=?19.56 years) that the critical factor governing performance was inter-item interval. We argue that tasks using behavioural continuous recognition to index pattern separation in immediate memory will benefit from generous inter-item spacing, offering protection from inter-item interference.     

Instructing Young Children in the Use of Memorizing Strategies: Effects at Study and Recall

This study examined preschool children's abilities to apply a newly learned organizational study-recall strategy in posttraining tasks that employed stimulus items from different media and that were administered by an unfamiliar experimenter. Fortyeight 4- and 5-year-old children were assigned to training and control conditions that alternated the presentation of pictures and objects on baseline, training, and test tasks. Samemedium tasks required children to study and recall items of the same stimulus medium (pictures or objects) as that depicting items in the training tasks. Different-medium tasks required performance with items presented in the alternate medium. Training included demonstration and practice in using a study-sorting strategy to organize the stimuli, encouragement to apply the strategy in new tasks, presenting a rationale for using the strategy, giving feedback about the effectiveness of using the strategy, and providing incentive for effortful performance. Subjects in the training groups showed marked increases in the use of sorting activities in posttraining tasks but failed to show corresponding significant improvements in item recall.     

Evidence for time-based models of free recall

Is memory temporally organized? According to temporal distinctiveness models of memory, temporally isolated items should be better remembered than temporally crowded items in free recall tasks. Here, we tested this class of model by varying the temporal isolation of items either predictably (Experiment 1) or unpredictably (Experiment 2) in a free recall task. In both experiments, item recall probability increased as a function of the temporal gaps both before and after the item. The results are taken as support for temporal distinctiveness models of memory, in which items are represented and recalled in terms of their positions along a temporal dimension.     

Predictability and recall strategy for nominal serial position curves

Forty subjects participated in the present study which was designed to test the predictability notion (Rönnberg, 1980b) contra a temporal model and how they apply to a list learning situation. Recall order was combined with type of encoding function governing the inter-item intervals in the lists. Data supported the predictability notion in general and a strong position of this concept in particular.     

Local temporal distinctiveness does not benefit auditory verbal and spatial serial recall

In the present study, we examined the role of randomly arranged temporal intervals preceding and following items (pre- and postitem intervals, respectively) in auditory verbal and spatial recall tasks. The duration of the pre- and postitem intervals did not affect serial recall performance. This finding calls into question (1) the suggestion that the interval following an item permits the consolidation of information in memory, even in a relatively demanding spatial task, and (2) the prediction that temporal distinctiveness should improve performance. The latter was explored further by showing that in contrast to our empirical data, a relative temporal distinctiveness model produced significant increases in recall performance when pre- and postitem intervals increased. The results are discussed with regard to recent studies revisiting the role of temporal isolation in short-term serial memory.     

Serial recall of colors: Two models of memory for serial order applied to continuous visual stimuli

This study investigated the effects of serial position and temporal distinctiveness on serial recall of simple visual stimuli. Participants observed lists of five colors presented at varying, unpredictably ordered interitem intervals, and their task was to reproduce the colors in their order of presentation by selecting colors on a continuous-response scale. To control for the possibility of verbal labeling, articulatory suppression was required in one of two experimental sessions. The predictions were derived through simulation from two computational models of serial recall: SIMPLE represents the class of temporal-distinctiveness models, whereas SOB-CS represents event-based models. According to temporal-distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated within a list are recalled more accurately than items that are temporally crowded. In contrast, event-based models assume that the time intervals between items do not affect recall performance per se, although free time following an item can improve memory for that item because of extended time for the encoding. The experimental and the simulated data were fit to an interference measurement model to measure the tendency to confuse items with other items nearby on the list—the locality constraint—in people as well as in the models. The continuous-reproduction performance showed a pronounced primacy effect with no recency, as well as some evidence for transpositions obeying the locality constraint. Though not entirely conclusive, this evidence favors event-based models over a role for temporal distinctiveness. There was also a strong detrimental effect of articulatory suppression, suggesting that verbal codes can be used to support serial-order memory of simple visual stimuli.     

Short-term retention of a single word relies on retrieval from long-term memory when both rehearsal and refreshing are disrupted

Many working memory (WM) models propose that the focus of attention (or primary memory) has a capacity limit of one to four items, and therefore, that performance on WM tasks involves retrieving some items from long-term (or secondary) memory (LTM). In the present study, we present evidence suggesting that recall of even one item on a WM task can involve retrieving it from LTM. The WM task required participants to make a deep (living/nonliving) or shallow (“e”/no “e”) level-of-processing (LOP) judgment on one word and to recall the word after a 10-s delay on each trial. During the delay, participants either rehearsed the word or performed an easy or a hard math task. When the to-be-remembered item could be rehearsed, recall was fast and accurate. When it was followed by a math task, recall was slower, error-prone, and benefited from a deeper LOP at encoding, especially for the hard math condition. The authors suggest that a covert-retrieval mechanism may have refreshed the item during easy math, and that the hard math condition shows that even a single item cannot be reliably held in WM during a sufficiently distracting task—therefore, recalling the item involved retrieving it from LTM. Additionally, performance on a final free recall (LTM) test was better for items recalled following math than following rehearsal, suggesting that initial recall following math involved elaborative retrieval from LTM, whereas rehearsal did not. The authors suggest that the extent to which performance on WM tasks involves retrieval from LTM depends on the amounts of disruption to both rehearsal and covert-retrieval/refreshing maintenance mechanisms.     

An experimental analysis of memory processing

Rhesus monkeys were trained and tested in visual and auditory list-memory tasks with sequences of four travel pictures or four natural/environmental sounds followed by single test items. Acquisitions of the visual list-memory task are presented. Visual recency (last item) memory diminished with retention delay, and primacy (first item) memory strengthened. Capuchin monkeys, pigeons, and humans showed similar visual-memory changes. Rhesus learned an auditory memory task and showed octave generalization for some lists of notes--tonal, but not atonal, musical passages. In contrast with visual list memory, auditory primacy memory diminished with delay and auditory recency memory strengthened. Manipulations of interitem intervals, list length, and item presentation frequency revealed proactive and retroactive inhibition among items of individual auditory lists. Repeating visual items from prior lists produced interference (on nonmatching tests) revealing how far back memory extended. The possibility of using the interference function to separate familiarity vs. recollective memory processing is discussed.     

NUMBER AND SPECIFICITY OF PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES IN THE PREDICTION OF ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS

The problem of how many performance outcomes to use and how specific they should be in predicting satisfaction and behavioral intentions was addressed. 323 soldiers responded to a desirability and instrumentality scale for each of 16 potential outcomes obtainable from outstanding performance. Scores were factor analysed and composites were formed to reflect each dimension. Three criteria (satisfaction, perceived effort and intention to reenlist) were predicted using (a) all 16 outcome items, (b) only 11 items defining four outcome dimensions and (c) 4 items only, each item reflecting an outcome dimension. In all cases, the 11-item set was a better predictor than the 16-item set, and the 4-item set was nearly as effective as the 16-item set. Instrumentalities were found to be significantly better predictors of satisfaction than of effort, while the reverse was true of valences. It was suggested that adequacy of coverage of the out come domain rather than list length or outcome specificity, was the critical issue in improving predictability.     

Effects of drawing on children's item recall

In four experiments, we used item recall tasks to investigate recent claims that young children's event recall can be facilitated by drawing. In Experiments 1 to 3, children of ages 5 to 8 years were tested 4 h after presentation for recall of a set of 25 items that had been presented in groups on a colored, segmented board. In Experiment 1, recall was enhanced by replacement of the objects on the board as they were recalled, but not by drawing them. In Experiments 2 and 3, drawing the board and objects concurrently with or just prior to verbal recall not only failed to facilitate recall, but significantly reduced the number of items reported by 5- to 6-year-olds. In Experiment 4, drawing again impaired recall of items that had been presented as paired associates. Overall, results indicate that under some conditions drawing can impair children's recall rather than facilitate it, as reported in several recent studies.     

The processing of inter-item relations as a moderating factor of retrieval-induced forgetting

We investigated influences of item generation and emotional valence on retrieval-induced forgetting. Drawing on postulates of the three-factor theory of generation effects, generation tasks differentially affecting the processing of inter-item relations were applied. Whereas retrieval-induced forgetting of freely generated items was moderated by the emotional valence as well as retrieval-induced forgetting of read items, even though in the reverse direction (Experiment 1), fragment completion eliminated the moderation of retrieval-induced forgetting by emotional valence (Experiment 2). The results corroborate the assumption that the processing of inter-item relations is crucial for the immunization against retrieval-induced forgetting. Moreover, differential processing of inter-item relations may clarify the mixed results on moderating factors of retrieval-induced forgetting that have been reported.     

Persistence of the spacing effect in free recall under varying incidental learning conditions

In three incidental learning experiments, an attempt was made to eliminate the processing deficit under massed presentation that is assumed to be responsible for the spacing effect in free recall, according to the attenuation of attention hypothesis. This was to be accomplished in Experiment I by requiring subjects to attend specifically to the total exposure duration of each item and in Experiments II and III by requiring subjects to rate the successive occurrences of repeated items on different semantic rating scales. The results of the three experiments consistently showed that these manipulations were ineffective in eliminating the spacing effect. Subsidiary analyses indicated that the activities involved in doing the semantic rating tasks do not provide direct access to retrieval cues useful for subsequent recall. Instead, it appears that, in order to perform the semantic rating tasks reliably, subjects must compare the to-be-rated item with previously rated items, and this comparison process may serve as the source of retrieval cues for subsequent recall.     

Temporal isolation effects in recognition and serial recall

Recent temporal distinctiveness models of memory predict that temporally isolated items will be recalled better than temporally crowded items. The effect has been found in some tasks (free recall, memory for serial order when report order is unconstrained, running memory span) but not in others (forward serial recall). Such results suggest that the attentional weighting given to a temporal dimension in memory may vary with task demands. Here, we find robust temporal isolation effects in recognition memory (Experiment 1) and a smaller isolation effect in forward serial recall when an open pool of items is used (Experiment 2). Analysis of 26 temporal isolation effects suggests that the phenomenon occurs in a range of tasks but is larger when it is useful to attend to a temporal dimension in memory. The overall pattern of results is taken to favor memory models that rely on multiple weighted dimensions in memory, one of which is temporal.