Item Strength and Input Location in Free Recall Learning

Conover, Jerry N.; Brown, Sam C.

doi:10.1037/e666602011-037

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Ultimately, the savings paradigm may help us to understand the nature of representation in long-term memory. From Nelson's experiments (Nelson, 1971(Nelson, , 1978Nelson et al, 1979Nelson et al, , 1984Nelson & Rothbart, 1972), as well as those of Conover and Brown (1977), MacLeod (1976), and the present experiments, we are already gaining some insight into the complexity of this representation. An important goal--one that Nelson has strongly advocated--is the bringing together of results from many different kinds of memory measures to develop a unified view of representation.…”

Section: The Levels-of-inclusiveness Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 57%

“…Until recently, the handful of studies using relearning typically had done so to contrast different measures of retention (e.g., Bahrick & Bahrick, 1964;Luh, 1922;Postman & Rau, 1957), not to study relearning in its own right. However, in the past 15 years, the studies of Nelson and his coworkers (Nelson, 1971(Nelson, , 1978Nelson & Rothbart, 1972;Nelson, Fehling, & Moore-Glascock, 1979;Nelson, Gerler, & Narens, 1984) and others (Conover & Brown, 1977;Groninger & Groninger, 1980;MacLeod, 1976) have demonstrated the value of exploring savings in the traditional list-learning framework. Other studies have extended the study of savings to a broader domain, including learning new skills (e.g., Kolers, 1976).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Forgotten but not gone: Savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

MacLeod¹

1988

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Five experiments examined the relearning of words, simple line-drawing pictures, and complex photographic pictures after retention intervals of 1 tb 10 weeks. For those items that were neither recalled nor recognized, the identical item was relearned better than an unrelated control item, as measured by a recall test following relearning. This relearning advantage in recall held tbr all three classes of material and extended to the cross-modality case (i.e., picture-word and wordpicture) and the same-referent case (i.e., two pictures of the same object). However, recognition tests of relearning failed to detect this same relearning advantage for apparently forgotten items. Taken together, these findings conflict with the existing account of savings. Most fundamental, the classic argument that relearning serves a trace-strengthening function is undermined by the observed recall-recognition contrast. An alternative explanation of savings is suggested wherein relearning assists retrieval of information, thereby affecting recall in particular. We all know stories about people who believe they have entirely forgotten some event or skill, and then readily recover it when given the opportunity to learn it again. A woman spoke French as a young child in prewar Belgium but has had no exposure to the language since moving to the United States and claims no familiarity with the language as an adult. Over 40 years later, she visits Paris and finds to her surprise that she picks up the language with apparent ease. A man memorized Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" in elementary school but has no recollection of having done so when his child shows the poem to him 30 years later. In helping the child to memorize the poem, however, the father learns it again quickly, perhaps never even recognizing why. Such anecdotes abound. The general conclusion is that relearning is faster and easier than original learning. Ebbinghaus (1885) called this relearning advantage savings, presumably because the partial information still "saved" in memory was what assisted learning on the next encounter. Interestingly, in line with the foregoing illustrations, this savings advantage can even occur without awareness many years after the original learning (Burtt, 1932, 1941; Titchener, 1923). Without question, the savings effect is a powerful one. Un-This research was supported by Grants A7459 and E6532 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and by funds provided by the University of Toronto. The original article was prepared while the author was on study leave at the University of Queensland. For collecting the data, my thanks go to Deborah Paes (Experiment 1), Geoffrey Lowrie (Experiment 2), and P. J. Lootsteen (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). I also thank Barbara Tversky and Endel Tulving for providing the materials for Experiments 3 and 4, respectively. I am grateful to Bert Forrin, Sam Glucksberg, Tom Nelson, Henry Roediger, Dan Schacter, Marilyn Smith, Gay Snodgrass, the members of Endel Tulving's research group,...

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Section: The Levels-of-inclusiveness Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 57%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgotten but not gone: Savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

MacLeod¹

1988

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…These recall results support the notion that the word frequency effect is largely dependent upon the structure of the stimulus list and that selective attention is different in the alternating and homogeneous lists. One selective attention hypothesis (Conover & Brown, 1977) assumes that items in a random list of words will differ in the ease with which they may be remembered. Alternating discriminably different items generates a maximum number of contrasts leading, in the present case, to greater attention to rare words to the detriment of common words.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal contrast and the word frequency effect.

May¹,

Cuddy²,

Norton³

1979

Canadian Journal of Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologi

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The word frequency effect was studied in recall and recognition under three list structures, (a) homogeneous rare or common nouns, (b) mixed alternating frequencies, and (c) mixed blocked frequencies. The major rinding in Experiment I was that the number of frequency contrasts within a list had a clear effect on recall and little effect on recognition. Recall of rare items was poor in a homogeneous list, equal to common items in a blocked list, and better than common items when in a list of alternating frequencies. Experiment n examined the reversed frequency effect of the alternating list under overt and covert rehearsal conditions across three trials. Under overt rehearsal there was no significant difference in number of rehearsals of rare and common items. The superior recall of rare items present on Trial 1 decreased across trials supporting a stimulus change-contrast interpretation of the effect of mixed frequency items in free recall.

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“…Because every subject had the same relearning list, any differences in relearning can be attributed directly to the semantic relationship under investigation (e.g., identity vs. synonymy vs. unrelated control). One relearning trial, rather than many relearning trials, was given because differences in relearning are maximal on the first relearning trial and necessarily decrease thereafter (Conover & Brown, 1977;Nelson, 1971).…”

Section: Savings Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, even current textbooks on introductory psychology discuss retention in terms of Ebbinghaus' classic curve of forgetting, with savings as the dependent measure (e.g., Hilgard, Atkinson, & Atkinson, 1975, p. 225). Although research on savings and relearning dwindled during the middle of this century, interest has recently been revived (Bahrick, 1967;Conover & Brown, 1977;Kolers, 1976;MacLeod, 1976;Nelson, 1971Nelson, , 1978Nelson & Rothbart, 1972;Nelson & Smith, 1972;Nelson & Vining, 1978). One reason for the revival of interest may be that savings is one of the most sensitive measures of retention, perhaps even more sensitive than recognition (Nelson, 1978).…”

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The nature of semantic savings for items forgotten from long-term memory.

Nelson¹,

Fehling²,

Moore-Glascock³

1979

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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This research investigated the kind of semantic information that facilitates the relearning of a nonrecalled item (i.e., the kind of semantic information that is saved in the memory trace of a forgotten item). The paradigm consisted of three stages: (a) learn a list of number-word pairs (e.g., 95-donate), (b) return approximately 1 month later for a retention test, and (c) relearn a new list of numberword pairs that have various kinds of semantic relatedness to the originally learned pairs (e.g., 95-donate for an identity relationship, 95-give for a relationship along some specific dimension such as synonymy, or 95-profess for an unrelated control relationship). Considering relearning performance on only those items not recalled on the retention test (i.e., forgotten items), a relearning advantage of the identity condition over the control condition demonstrates that some kind of information was saved; a relearning advantage of the specific-dimension condition (e.g., synonymy) over the control condition demonstrates that the specific information under investigation (e.g., synonymic information) was saved in the memory traces of forgotten items.Seven experiments investigated various kinds of semantic information that potentially could be saved in a nonrecalled memory trace. Experiment 1 showed a lack of reliable savings for both synonymic information (e.g., despises-hates) and antonymic information (e.g., loves-hates). Experiment 2 yielded reliable savings for both superordinate information (e.g., buick~car) and subordinate information (e.g., vehicle-car). Experiment 3 suggested that information is saved about some (i.e., more than one, but not all) subordinates of the originally learned item. Experiment 4 extended the lack of synonymic savings to three parts of speech: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Experiment 5 showed that the lack of synonymic savings occurs not only when acquisition was via verbatim recall, but also when acquisition was via gist recall. Experiment 6 extended this finding by demonstrating a lack of synonymic savings-even when the learner, studying for gist recall, was forced to generate a synonym of each item on every acquisition study trial! Experiment 7 yielded a lack of reliable savings for associative information (e.g., table-chair).A parsimonious theoretical account of the above results for five major kinds of semantic information is given by a proposition that derives from the hierarchical notion of inclusion (e.g., buicks are included in cars, which, in turn, are included in vehicles; cars have approximately the same degree of inclusion as automobiles and as trucks). This proposition is: Only semantic information at greater and lesser degrees of inclusion (than the originally learned item) is saved in the memory trace during forgetting. That is, superordinate information and subordinate information are saved (greater and lesser inclusion, respectively), whereas synonymic informa-

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Item Strength and Input Location in Free Recall Learning

Cited by 5 publications

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Forgotten but not gone: Savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

Forgotten but not gone: Savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

Temporal contrast and the word frequency effect.

The nature of semantic savings for items forgotten from long-term memory.

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