From association to gist: Some critical tests.

Abstract

We report the first evidence that the gist mechanism of fuzzy-trace theory and the associative mechanism of activation monitoring theory operate in parallel, in the recall version of the Deese/Roediger/McDermott illusion. In three experiments, we implemented a new methodology that allows their respective empirical indexes, gist strength (GS) and backward associative strength (BAS), to each be manipulated while the other is held constant. In Experiment 1, increasing GS increased false recall of missing words, but increasing BAS did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, however, increasing GS and increasing BAS both increased recall of missing words, and those effects were independent and additive. In all three experiments, GS and BAS affected true recall of list words in qualitatively different ways: (a) Increasing GS always improved true recall, regardless of whether BAS was high or low, but (b) increasing BAS impaired true recall when GS was high and improved true recall when GS was low. To pinpoint the retrieval loci of the two variables' effects, we analyzed the data of all experiments with the dual-retrieval model. Those analyses showed that the variables' respective effects were due to different retrieval processes.