Long-term visual traces of visually presented words

Hintzman, Douglas L.; Summers, Jeffery J.

doi:10.3758/bf03334359

Cited by 32 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…These contrasts with the results of the lexical decision experiments suggest that the two tasks tap memory in different ways. The old-new results are reasonably consistent with results reported by others using a similar paradigm (Hintzman & Summers, 1973;Kirsner, 1973), although the results for third presentations in Experiment 5 are not entirely consistent with previous research on the effects of spacing between items. For example, Hintzman (1969Hintzman ( , 1974 reported that short lags between first and second presentations sometimes produced poorer recognition memory for third presentations than did longer lags, although there was some tendency in this direction for the shortest lags in the current data.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory.

Scarborough

Cortese²,

Scarborough³

1977

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

812

724

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Five reaction time experiments explored word-frequency effects in wordnonword decision tasks and in pronunciation and memory tasks. Highfrequency words were recognized substantially faster than low-frequency words in the word-nonword decision tasks. However, there was little effect of word frequency in the pronunciation and old-weiv memory tasks. Further, in the word-nonword lexical decision task, prior presentations of words produced substantial and apparently long-lasting reductions in the basic frequency effect. The occurrence of natural language frequency effects only in the word-nonword decision task supports the use of this task to study the organization of, and retrieval from, the subjective lexicon. The modification of frequency effects by repetition suggests that natural language frequency effects may be attributed partly to the recency with which words have occurred. Analysis of the response latencies using Sternberg's additivefactors approach indicates that frequency effects consist of both effects in encoding and in retrieval from memory.In the corpus of 1 million words ana-Word frequency has been used as an exlyzed by Kucera and Francis (1967), recur-planatory variable in psychological research, rences of the most common 133 words ac-especially in word recognition and memory count for about 50% of the entire sample, experiments. Word frequency is a consistent Even when there are alternative ways of predictor of response time differences in communicating an idea, we typically use lexical decision tasks (Landauer & Freedcommon high-frequency words to express man, 1968; Rubenstein, Garfield, & Milourselves. One explanation is that words likan, 1970). On a typical trial in a lexical that have been used frequently in the past decision task, subjects are shown a letter are the ones most likely to "come to mind" string and are instructed to indicate as in language production. quickly as possible whether the string forms a word. In previous research we have found several variables that predict response times This research was supported by a Faculty Re-(e.g., orthography, grammatical class, search Award to the first author from the City j ma geability) ; 0116 of the Strongest predic-University of New York. Experiments 1 and 2 , & , .. J J , , j • r were reported at the meeting of the Eastern Psy-tors of differences between words is frechological Association in Philadelphia, April 1974. quency. Consistently, words that differ by a We wish to thank Thomas Landauer for many factor of 10 in frequency differ by about 50 helpful comments on an earlier version of the msec m response time, resulting in about ^Req'uests for reprints should be sent to Don L. 150-msec differences between relatively rare Scarborough, Department of Psychology, Brook-(1 occurrence per million) and frequent lyn College,

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory.

Scarborough

Cortese²,

Scarborough³

1977

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

812

724

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To date, most research in this area has dealt with the question of whether or not attribute information is stored in a representational fashion. For instance, some investigators (notably Craik & Kirsner, 1974;Hintzman & Summers, 1973;Kirsner, 1973) have advocated the literal-copy hypothesis as providing the most satisfactory explanation of why recognition is more accurate and/or faster when the to-be-remembered words are tested in the same physical form as they were originally presented for study than when study and test formats differ (see also Cole, Coltheart, & Allard, 1974;Hintzman et al, 1972;Kirsner, 1973). Why this should happen is not fully explained, but Hintzman and Summers suggest that "the effectiveness with which a recognition test word retrieves a trace of a past occurrence depends in part upon the physical similarity between the test word and the original stimulus" (p. 326).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are there long-term literal copies of visually presented words?

Light¹,

Berger²

1976

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory

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Evidence for the hypothesis that the appearance of visually presented words is stored in "literal copy" form is critically evaluated and shown to be inconclusive. An experiment in which students were required to retain information about zero, one, or two visual properties of words is reported. A strong version of the literal-copy hypothesis predicts that retention of both case and color should be equally good under instructions to remember one of these attributes and instructions to remember both. However, the results were inconsistent with predictions from this hypothesis. A model that assumes that each visual attribute is stored independently in abstract prepositional form provided a good quantitative fit to the data.

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“…For example, context has been described as information that fluctuates randomly over time with respect to different item presentations (e.g., Brown, Preece, & Hulme, 2000;Estes, 1955;Mensink & Raaijmakers, 1988;Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997), which might be referred to as temporal context (cf. Hintzman & Summers, 1973). Context has also been defined as the physical environment in which an item occurs (e.g., Godden & Baddeley, 1975;Murnane & Phelps, 1993, 1994, 1995Murnane, Phelps, & Malmberg, 1999;Smith, Glenberg, & Bjork, 1978).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory.

Steyvers¹,

Malmberg²

2003

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

134

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According to some theories of recognition memory (e.g., S. Dennis & M. S. Humphreys, 2001), the number of different contexts in which words appear determines how memorable individual occurences of words will be: A word that occurs in a small number of different contexts should be better recognized than a word that appears in a larger number of different contexts. To empirically test this prediction, a normative measure is developed, referred to here as context variability, that estimates the number of different contexts in which words appear in everyday life. These findings confirm the prediction that words low in context variability are better recognized (on average) than words that are high in context variability.In a typical recognition memory experiment, a list of words is studied, and memory is tested subsequently by showing subjects both words that were studied (i.e., targets) and words that were not studied (i.e., foils). The subject's task is to discriminate the targets from the foils. Of course, subjects have encountered words a large number of times in many different contexts prior to the experiment. Hence, the subject's rather daunting task is to discriminate the most recent encounter with a word from all prior encounters.Theories of memory usually address this issue by making a distinction between item and context information (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1972;Dennis & Humphreys, 2001;Humphreys, Bain, & Pike, 1989;Jacoby, 1991;Maddox & Estes, 1997;McGeoch, 1942;Mensink & Raaijmakers, 1988;Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981;Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997): Item information represents a studied stimulus (e.g., a word), and context information represents the environment in which the stimulus was encountered. According to these theories, when an item is studied, both item and context information are stored in an episodic trace, and when recognition memory is tested, memory is probed with a retrieval cue consisting of both item and context information. The critical role context plays in the retrieval cue is to restrict the probe to the relevant subset of memory traces (as defined by the task). Those episodic traces that contain context information similar to the retrieval cue might become members of the "activated" subset of memory and contribute information to the recognition decision. Hence, the to-be-remembered encounter with a word can, in principle, be isolated from prior encounters according to the similarity between the context used in the retrieval cue and context information stored in memory.

show abstract

Long-term visual traces of visually presented words

Cited by 32 publications

References 11 publications

Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory.

Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory.

Are there long-term literal copies of visually presented words?

The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory.

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