Age differences in proactive interference in verbal and visuospatial working memory

Abstract

In a free recall situation, subjects can predict, with some degree of accuracy, which words they will subsequently recall. This study focused on the question of why subjects often recall words to which they assign low prediction ratings. This problem was approached by comparing the properties of recall-not-predicted (RNP) and recall-predicted (RP) words which appeared in subjects' recall protocols. No differences were found between the two types of items (RNP and RP) in retrieval monitoring. The two types of items were differentiated by whether subjects could recollect the actual occurrence of the recalled items in the study list (“remember” responses) or not (“know” responses). Furthermore, the recall of RNP items, but not RP items, was improved by retrieval prompts. These results were taken to support the position that weakly encoded items may be recalled if they encounter a highly favourable retrieval environment, not anticipated by subjects during study.