The relationship between recognition and cued recall in memory of enacted and nonenacted information

Summary An experiment was conducted to determine whether the processes underlying memory for enacted and nonenacted events are the same or different. The experimental paradigm used was that of recognition failure of recallable information. At study subjects were given verbal commands (e.g., break the match, roll the ball), that they were to remember or enact and remember. At test subjects were first asked to recognize the noun in each command in the absence of the verb and then to recall the noun with the verb present as cue. Half the subjects were given the two tests in the reverse order. The results demonstrate that enactment and nonenactment differ with respect to the degree of dependence/independence between recognition and recall. In the enactment condition recognition and cued recall are completely independent and in the nonenactment condition they are almost completely dependent.     

Motivated memory: Dissociation between performance data and subjective reports

Summary Three experiments are reported to test a claim by previous subjects that lack of motivation for performing well in memory experiments yielded less than optimal performance. In each experiment the subjects of one group were informed of monetary incentives prior to study; in a second group they were informed of these incentives after study but prior to the test; no mention of incentives was made to the subjects of a third group. Recall and recognition procedures were used to assess memory performance. The data of all three experiments demonstrated no differences between the three groups with respect to performance. The claim that subjects in regular memory experiments would typically perform less than optimally is thus rejected. Subjective reports, however, revealed that incentives had affected the amount of effort put into the memory tasks. This dissociation between performance data and subjective reports is discussed in relation to the concept of motivation.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Assessment of retrieval strategy in incidental, intentional, and inclusion tests with word-fragment cues

The purpose of this study was to assess retrieval strategy in incidental, intentional, and inclusion tests with word-fragment cues following a levels-of-processing manipulation at study. The results of Exp. 1 showed small levels-of-processing effects in incidental tests, and most subjects reported involuntary rather than voluntary retrieval of study-list words. In an intentional test, although levels of processing had a much greater effect, quite a few subjects also reported involuntary rather than voluntary retrieval of study-list words, and these subjects showed a smaller effect of levels of processing than subjects reporting voluntary retrieval. These results suggest that subjects given instructions for both voluntary and involuntary retrieval of study-list words in an inclusion test might not in fact attempt voluntary retrieval at all, but simply adopt an involuntary retrieval strategy. The results of Exp. 2 provided evidence to support this suggestion. The general implication is that where test contamination refers to subjects' failure to use retrieval strategies in accordance with test instructions, inclusion tests can be contaminated, as well as incidental or intentional tests, and that it is always necessary to obtain converging evidence about the actual strategies subjects use.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

The effects of Familial Sinistrality and preferred hand on dichaptic and dichotic tasks

Processing asymmetries for tactile-spatial and auditory-verbal processing were investigated in two studies using the S. F. Witelson (1974, Cortex, 10, 3–17) dichaptic procedure. Experiment 1 used eight right-handed males in a free recall procedure. More shapes were correctly detected by the left hand but only with a right hand response. In Experiment 2, right and left handers with no Familial Sinistrality (FS) were compared with left handers with various types of FS, looking at pre- and postcued order of report and precuing the response hand. No group showed hand asymmetry with pre- or postcuing for either responding hand. Right handers showed no difference with order of report; however, left handers made fewer correct detections for items to be reported second. There were differences between the Parental FS and the Sibling FS groups both on the dichotic listening and the haptic tasks.     

A reconstructive-processing interpretation of the recognition failure phenomenon

The generality of the recognition failure phenomenon was the primary basis for the present research. It was hypothesized that the phenomenon obtains whenever an insufficient degree of compatibility exists between the task demands at recognition and those present during study. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that, despite a recognition task that was incompatible to conditions of encoding, subjects could actively reconstruct aspects of the initial situation, and hence recognition failure was minimized. It was assumed that the stimulus material — categorized word pairs — facilitated this reconstructive process. Experiment 3 was designed specifically to examine further the reconstructive process as well as recognition failure. The results indicated that (a) the nature of this process could be mathematically predicted, and (b) subjects seldom failed to recognize words they recalled. The results of the present study strongly suggest an important boundary condition of the phenomenon of recognition failure. Moreover, Tulving and Wiseman's (1975) quadratic function could not predict accurately the obtained magnitude of recognition failure.     

Delayed monochromatic hue matches indicate characteristics of visual memory

Short-term memory for 16 monochromatic hues from 425 to 640 nm was measured after six delays from .1 to 24.3 sec by means of an iterative, momentary stimulus-matching technique. Small shifts were revealed in the remembered hue produced by certain wavelengths at some delays. These shifts did not follow trends consistent with a storage dependent on sensory pathway characteristics, perceptually unique hues, or semantic encoding but may reflect entropic effects in a storage that is remarkably unbiased. By indicating the discriminability of hues in memory, standard deviations of the delayed matches reveal other characteristics of what is stored: Their smooth, exponential growth questions the existence of "levels" and permits estimating the half-life of hue memory; their continued resemblance to the discrimination function for simultaneously perceived hues suggests that the stored activity; closely resembled the sensory response of color. The results also indicate how successive comparisons may be corrected in applied color work.