Determinants of the word-frequency effect in recognition memory

Abstract

Possible determinants of the word-frequency effect (WFE), that is, the finding that lowfrequency (LF) words are recognized more accurately than high-frequency (HF) words, are evaluated. Three studies examined the view that, since HF words have more meanings than LF words, it is less likely that the word sense tagged at time of presentation will be accessed at time of test and a correct response will be made. To ensure the same word sense was accessed at time of presentation and time of test in the case of both HF and LF words, sentence contexts used during presentation were combined with cuing procedures at time of test. Recognition performance improved, but the WFE was unaltered even when the identical sentence context was used during presentation and test. A fourth study considered Glanzer and Bowles ' (1976) suggestion that associates of both HF and LF words tend to be HF words that are (1) likely to be activated and derivatively encoded during presentation and (2) likely to include a number of distractors from the recognition test sufficient to impair performance on HF words. Analysis of associative responses of subjects to HF and LF words, and the errors they made, support strongly such an interference-typeinterpretation of the WFE.

A retrieval model for both recognition and recall.

“…The Earhard (1982) results are particularly interesting. He set out to test the notion that HF words have more meanings available at study and test, so the chances of identical encoding at these two times would be lower; without identical encoding, performance would be worse.…”

“…In our model, it is not necessary that an implicit or an explicit HF associate be generated at the time of study. After all, the result of such a generation in Earhard's (1982) model is to make the generated item more familiar at test. In our model, such items would be more familiar when tested anyway, because they have higher residual strengths to the study items.…”

Subjective memorability and the mirror effect.

“…More specifically, because low-frequency words have fewer and more exact meanings than high-frequency words, the semantic overlap between low-frequency lures and targets is small relative to that between high-frequency lures and targets (cf. Earhard, 1982;Glanzer & Bowles, 1976).…”

True and False Recognition in MINERVA2: Explanations from a Global Matching Perspective

“…First, lower associates will share fewer semantic features with the prototype, reducing false recognition. Second, lower associates also tend to be lower frequency items, making them more discriminable as exemplars (Underwood & Freund, 1970;Glanzer & Bowles, 1976;Earhard, 1982).…”