The effects of item familiarization on the long-term retention of paired-associate lists.

Investigated the effects of prior item familiarization on the acquisition and retention of paired-associate lists. Ss were 32 undergraduates in 8 experimental and 2 control groups. The critical items were trigrams which were paired with paralogs in the paired-associate task. There were 20 trials of learning, and recall was tested after 1 wk. The experimental treatments formed a 2 * 2 * 2 factorial design. Familiarization was either (a) for stimulus or response terms, (b) relevant or irrelevant to the learning task, or (c) at a frequency of 10 or 40 exposures/item. Control groups were given no preliminary training. Performance on the early learning trials was facilitated by response but not by stimulus familiarization. Both relevant and irrelevant response familiarization increased long-term retention losses, whereas stimulus familiarization had no reliable effect on recall. It is concluded that response familiarization is a source of both facilitation and interference. (French summary) (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)