Effects of task-specific instructions on the picture memory of children in recall and recognition tasks.

A total of 72 kindergartners and 2nd and 5th graders were assigned to either a recall-specific instruction group or a remember instruction group to determine the developmental stage at which children are able to fashion stimulus encoding and/or storage activities so as to effectively meet the demands of an anticipated recall or recognition task. Results indicate that at least by age 11 (Grade 5), some recall-specific mediational capabilities have been developed and can be used effectively to facilitate performance in an anticipated recall task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Signal-detection analysis of recall and recognition memory.

Conducted 3 paired-associate learning studies to compare signal-detection analysis of recall and recognition memory performance. Exp. I with 80 female undergraduates, showed that (a) recall and recognition signal-detection model sensitivity measures (d's) are substantially different in later trials, and (b) a previously suggested correction for guessing does not transform the data to theoretical expectations. Exp. II, with 45 Ss, showed that S's guessing rates change systematically over trials and further supported the inappropriateness of a guessing correction. Exp. III, with 40 Ss, attempted to hold constant the probability of guessing correctly. It is suggested that for purposes of comparing recognition and recall, a receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of recall data is inappropriate and that a better approach is the use of the forced-choice or 1-of-M-orthogonal signals model. A possible interpretation of a recall ROC d' is suggested. (French summary) (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the relationship between recall and recognition memory.

The relationship between recall and recognition has been a central topic for the study of memory. A test of alternative views about recall and recognition was arranged by studying amnesic patients. In amnesia, damage has occurred to a brain system important for declarative (conscious) memory, but skill learning, priming, and other forms of nonconscious memory are intact. Recall and recognition were found to be proportionately impaired in amnesic patients, and confidence ratings for the recognition judgments were commensurate with the level of impaired performance. The results are contrary to views that either recognition memory or associated confidence judgments are ordinarily supported significantly by nonconscious memory. The results favor the view that recall and recognition are related functions of declarative memory and equivalently dependent on the brain system damaged in amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential age-related processing limitations in recall and recognition tasks.

The degree to which processing resources are responsible for age differences in performance on recall and recognition tasks was examined in this study. To examine this, a secondary task incorporating a memory component (digit preloads) was implemented during retrieval. Results revealed that older adults, relative to younger adults, exhibited greater decrements in secondary task performance as the difficulty of the secondary task increased. These age differences were greater in the recall task than in the recognition task. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that speed accounted for the largest proportion of age-related variance in the recall task while both speed and working memory contributed to much of the secondary task variance. Results confirm the hypothesis that recall requires greater processing capacity than recognition and that older adults have greater processing-capacity limitations than younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's knowledge about the apparent-real and pretend-real distinctions.

Three experimental tests were made of the hypothesis that understanding of the pretend–real distinction develops earlier than understanding of the theoretically related apparent–real distinction. As predicted, 3-yr-old children consistently performed better on pretend–real tasks than on apparent–real tasks, even when the two tasks were identical except for the distinction tested. Speculations were made about why understanding of the two distinctions might develop in that particular sequence and about how they might be related developmentally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of mobilization of knowledge on recognition and recall.

Examined the effect of mobilization of knowledge on recall and recognition in 4 experiments, using 170 undergraduates. In Exp I, the mobilization group generated instances from a specified category and received a study list that contained some of these generated items as well as other members of the category that had not been generated. Control Ss received the same study list after they had generated instances from an irrelevant category. Contrary to previous findings by J. Peeck (see record 1983-22657-001), prior mobilization did not facilitate free recall of the generated study-list items and inhibited recall of nongenerated items. This pattern of recall was replicated in Exp II. The inhibitory effect of prior mobilization on nongenerated items was eliminated in Exp III, which used a recognition memory test. In addition, prior mobilization facilitated the recognition of generated study list items. Exp IV found that when knowledge about the mobilized category was limited, prior mobilization did facilitate free recall but only for generated study-list items. An attempt was made to reconcile data with previous results and to specify the conditions under which mobilization facilitates or inhibits subsequent memory performance. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of levels of processing on recall from working memory and delayed recall tasks.

Recent research in working memory has highlighted the similarities involved in retrieval from complex span tasks and episodic memory tasks, suggesting that these tasks are influenced by similar memory processes. In the present article, the authors manipulated the level of processing engaged when studying to-be-remembered words during a reading span task (Experiment 1) and an operation span task (Experiment 2) in order to assess the role of retrieval from secondary memory during complex span tasks. Immediate recall from both span tasks was greater for items studied under deep processing instructions compared with items studied under shallow processing instructions regardless of trial length. Recall was better for deep than for shallow levels of processing on delayed recall tests as well. These data are consistent with the primary-secondary memory framework, which suggests that to-be-remembered items are displaced from primary memory (i.e., the focus of attention) during the processing phases of complex span tasks and therefore must be retrieved from secondary memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in assessing recall and recognition memory capacity.

32 1st graders, 32 5th graders, and 32 college students were asked to predict how many orally presented nouns they would later be able to (a) recall or (b) recognize. Based on a "task familiarity" argument, it was anticipated that quite different developmental patterns would be obtained on the 2 tasks. As expected, large developmental differences in prediction accuracy emerged on the recall task but not on the recognition task. Following actual task experience and feedback concerning performance, Ss at all ages made more accurate predictions about a hypothetical 2nd list even though the original developmental patterns still remained. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's memory for the true and pretend identities of objects.

Two studies examined how children conceive of the true and pretend identities of an object used in object-substitution pretense. In each study, 3- and 4-year-olds were assessed for their memory for each identity of an object that they used in a previous episode of pretend play (Study 1) or observed someone else using (Study 2). More children correctly remembered the true than the pretend identity of the objects, and there was no contingency between their tendency to remember each identity Additionally, children's tendency to correctly specify each identity was related to their age and when (i.e., during or after the pretend episode) the task was given. The results were explained by factors affecting young children's ability to manage separate representations of true and pretend identities of objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision difficulty and recall of prose.

Seven experiments were performed with 260 college students to address 3 questions: (a) Do prose decisions of different levels of difficulty affect relatively good and relatively poor readers in the same way? (b) Do difficult decisions have their effect because of a "directed attention effect?" and (c) Must difficult decisions appear in the context of less difficult decisions in order for them to have a facilitative effect on recall of prose? Results indicate that both good and poor readers benefited from making difficult decisions in much the same way. Time was not an important factor in recall, and difficult decisions affected recall in the absence of "directed attention effects." Less difficult decisions were not necessary in order for difficult decisions to be effective. It was also found that levels of questions and levels of difficulty both influenced recall. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adults' knowledge about memory: Awareness and use of memory strategies across tasks.

Two studies investigated college students' knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative memory strategies for different tasks and the relationship of this knowledge to strategy use and performance. In Experiment 1 students made paired-comparison judgments of the relative effectiveness of six strategies for increasing performance on one of three memory tasks. For each task some strategies were judged to be significantly more effective than others, whereas across tasks certain strategies were more likely to be judged effective for one task than for another. Experiment 2 examined the relationship of judgments of strategy effectiveness to actual strategy use and memory performance. Results indicated that different strategies were adopted across tasks and students were more likely to adopt strategies subsequently judged effective for that task. Students in Experiment 2 showed clearer discrimination among the strategies and an increased awareness of the efficacy of task-specific strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in children's recognition memory for faces.

Tested 108 White, upper-middle-class children at 3 age levels for recognition memory of adult male faces following 3 different orienting activities at encoding. One group received standard intentional learning instructions, another group judged whether each face had a big nose, and a 3rd group judged whether each face appeared "nice." Memory improved with age, and judgments of niceness facilitated memory equally at all ages. The results pose difficulties for A. L. Brown's (1975) model of memory development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Volunteering and the recall of interrupted tasks.

It was hypothesized that the proportion of interrupted tasks recalled would be greatest among volunteers serving by choice and least among draftees not willing to volunteer, with draftees who had been willing to volunteer falling between the 2. Within each of these 3 groups those given task orienting instructions were expected to recall greater proportions of interrupted tasks than those given ego orienting instructions. College students divided into 6 groups of 16 Ss each in a 3 X 2 factorial design were tested individually using the standard Zeigarnik procedure. The results conformed to expectations although the differences among the volunteering groups were small. It was argued that differences in degree of task involvement and ego involvement account for these results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ego strength and the recall of tasks.

"A study was made of the relation between selected Rorschach factors believed to measure ego strength and recall preferences obtained from a modified interruption-of-tasks procedure… Recall ratios for the group (of Ss) as a whole did not reveal any preference, either for completed or for interrupted tasks." Two Rorschach factors, M greater than FM, and A%, correlated slightly with the recall ratios in a manner which supported the hypothesis that strong egos will recall mostly interrupted tasks and weak egos will recall completed tasks. F + % of 80 to 90 correlated with the recall data in a manner opposite to the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of orienting tasks on the recall and recognition performance of subjects differing in age.

Investigated the recall and recognition performance of 498 adults in 3 age groups (20–39, 40–59, and 60–80 yrs) following different orienting-task requirements. It was demonstrated that young and old adults are differentially affected by task requirements. The youngest group was disproportionately benefited by an orienting task that involved semantic processing. Results support the notion of an age-related processing deficit. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term memory in amnesia: Cued recall, recognition memory, and confidence ratings.

We explored what kind of information is acquired when amnesic patients are able to exhibit significant retention on tests of cued recall and recognition memory. Amnesic patients and control subjects attempted to learn sets of sentences. Memory for the last word in each sentence was tested after 1 hr in the case of the amnesic patients, or after 1 to 2 weeks in the case of (delayed) control subjects. Amnesic patients and (delayed) control subjects performed at similar levels on tests of cued recall and recognition memory. Amnesic patients were just as confident of their correct answers as were control subjects. Moreover, amnesic patients were no more disadvantaged than control subjects when they were cued indirectly by presenting paraphrases of the original sentences. These findings demonstrate that the residual knowledge retained by amnesic patients can be as flexible, as accessible to indirect cues, and as available to awareness as the knowledge retained by (delayed) control subjects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task experience and children's working memory performance: A perspective from recall timing.

Working memory is an important theoretical construct among children, and measures of its capacity predict a range of cognitive skills and abilities. Data from 9- and 11-year-old children illustrate how a chronometric analysis of recall can complement and elaborate recall accuracy in advancing our understanding of working memory. A reading span task was completed by 130 children, 75 of whom were tested on 2 occasions, with sequence length either increasing or decreasing during test administration. Substantial pauses occur during participants' recall sequences, and they represent consistent performance traits over time, while also varying with recall circumstances and task history. Recall pauses help to predict reading and number skills, alongside as well as separate from levels of recall accuracy. The task demands of working memory change as a function of task experience, with a combination of accuracy and response timing in novel task situations being the strongest predictor of cognitive attainment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of encoding and strategic knowledge on children's choices among serial recall strategies.

This study examined how encoding and strategy knowledge influence 5- to 9-yr-olds' choices among serial recall procedures. The 7- and 9-yr-olds encoded contiguity relations within lists of numbers more consistently than did the 5-yr-olds, and encoding was related to their strategy choices. Presentation of lists with striking contiguity relations led 5-yr-olds to encode the contiguity relations more consistently and to alter their strategy choices accordingly. The 5-yr-olds' more consistent encoding of the contiguity relations, but not their strategy choices, transferred to another type of list. Thus, encoding of relations within the lists was not sufficient to guarantee that the encoding would influence strategy choices. A model of strategy choice that was developed in the context of arithmetic was used to explain the developmental differences in adaptiveness of strategy choices on a task on which the individual items were unfamiliar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of structure and clustering on recall and recognition memory in clinical depression.

Compared retrieval of high, medium, and low structured material, using word lists consisting of uncategorized words and categorized words presented in randomized and clustered order. Clinically depressed Ss were found to be significantly impaired relative to controls only on the medium level of structure and the randomized categories list when measured by free recall. There were no effects of group nor any interactions for recognition memory, although there was a main effect for group on d′ when signal detection analysis was applied. The implications of the findings for models of memory deficits in depression are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Erroneous knowledge of results affects decision and memory processes on timing tasks.

On mental timing tasks, erroneous knowledge of results (KR) leads to incorrect performance accompanied by the subjective judgment of accurate performance. Using the start-stop technique (an analogue of the peak interval procedure) with both reproduction and production timing tasks, the authors analyze what processes erroneous KR alters. KR provides guidance (performance error information) that lowers decision thresholds. Erroneous KR also provides targeting information that alters response durations proportionately to the magnitude of the feedback error. On the production task, this shift results from changes in the reference memory, whereas on the reproduction task this shift results from changes in the decision threshold for responding. The idea that erroneous KR can alter different cognitive processes on related tasks is supported by the authors' demonstration that the learned strategies can transfer from the reproduction task to the production task but not visa versa. Thus effects of KR are both task and context dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)