Effects of verbal coding on recognition memory.

Abstract

Four experiments investigated the role of verbal coding on retention of nonsense shapes as a function of memory load and retention interval. In training, 5s in the Named and Unnamed conditions had equal practice discriminating shapes in a delayed matching-to-sample task, while 5s in the Named condition also learned names for the shapes. A recognition test of the shapes followed pretraining. The Named condition, in general, was superior in terms of recognition performance. The advantage increased as the number of shapes to be remembered increased, but was constant across retention intervals from .2 to 50 sec. The superiority of the Named condition can be reduced or eliminated by interfering with rehearsal (counting backwards).Furthermore, estimates of shape recency in a continuous recognition task were superior for the Named condition only on items within the range of short-term memory. These data suggest that verbal coding of visual stimuli has its primary effect on recognition memory via increased rehearsal efficiency in short-term memory.

Serial learning of nonsense shapes as a function of instructions controlling labeling

“…Whether or not a label is attached is superfluous: labels arise as a result of the effort to discriminate the stimuli, and once a stimulus is discriminated, having a label makes no difference. These remarks must be tempered somewhat, since it appears that labels can make a difference even when pretraining equates amount of attention (Malloy & Ellis, 1970;Santa & Ranken, 1972). However, these studies also used somewhat atypical testing procedures.…”

“…However, these studies also used somewhat atypical testing procedures. It is not altogether clear why labels were irrelevant in the serial task, but not in those tasks used by Malloy and Ellis (1970) and Santa and Ranken (1972).…”

Linguistic influences on visual memory

“…These studies show that providing subjects with unique label training for a set of nonsense shapes can improve recognition of the shapes at least when the stimulus is complicated (Ellis & Muller, 1964), or when there is a large number of stimuli to be maintained (Santa & Ranken, 1972). The effects on recognition are strongest when the labels are in some way representative of the visual stimuli (Ellis, 1968).…”

“…The effects on recognition are strongest when the labels are in some way representative of the visual stimuli (Ellis, 1968). Several experiments have also shown effects of labeling with longer retention intervals (Daniel & Ellis, 1972;Ellis & Daniel, 1971), although Santa and Ranken (1972), in a somewhat different paradigm, were unable to obtain labeling effects beyond a short-term memory range.…”

“…In particular, Santa (Santa, & Ranken, 1972;Santa, Reference Note 4) has suggested that names in general, even arbitrary ones, might influence the retrieval process. Thus, it might be possible to obtain broader support for the Whorfian hypothesis in a task requiring recall or reproduction of visual stimuli.…”