Age dissociates recency and lag recency effects in free recall.

The temporal relations among word-list items exert a powerful influence on episodic memory retrieval. Two experiments were conducted with younger and older adults in which the age-related recall deficit was examined by using a decomposition method to the serial position curve, partitioning performance into (a) the probability of first recall, illustrating the recency effect, and (b) the conditional response probability, illustrating the lag recency effect (M. W. Howard & M. J. Kahana, 1999). Although the older adults initiated recall in the same manner in both immediate and delayed free recall, temporal proximity of study items (contiguity) exerted a much weaker influence on recall transitions in older adults. This finding suggests that an associative deficit may be an important contributor to older adults' well-known impairment in free recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of word frequency on recency effects in directed free recall.

Leading theoretical explanations of recency effects are designed to explain the reported absence of a word frequency effect on recall of words from recency serial positions. The present study used a directed free-recall procedure (J. I. Dalezman, 1976) and manipulated the frequency composition of the word lists (pure and mixed). Overall, with pure lists, a greater proportion of high-frequency (HF) words were recalled than low-frequency (LF) words, and with mixed lists, a greater proportion of LF words were recalled than HF words. Of importance, this recall advantage for one frequency over the other as a function of list composition was evident across the last three serial positions, indicating an influence of word frequency on recency effects that is dependent on the frequency composition of the lists. These results challenge one of the major assumptions on which several theories of recency effects have been based. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative recency and levels of processing in free recall.

Compared initial and final free recall of 5-item lists for 4 different "processing activities"; during list presentation 32 undergraduates either silently rehearsed, overtly rehearsed, generated rhymes, or generated verbal associates. Whereas the 2 rehearsal conditions showed a marked superiority in immediate free recall, their final (delayed) recall was inferior to that of lists for which associates were generated. It appears that the negative recency effect commonly obtained in delayed recall is a consequence of processing strategies which maximize the recency effect in immediate recall. (French summary) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociating conditional recency in immediate and delayed free recall: A challenge for unitary models of recency.

Temporal distinctiveness models of recency in free recall predict that increasing the delay between the end of sequence and attempting recall of items from that sequence will reduce recency. An empirical dissociation is reported here that violates this prediction when the delay is introduced by the act of recall itself. Analysis of data from a number of previously published free recall studies shows that when the assumed availability of final list items is taken into account, recency increases across the first few output positions in immediate recall despite the delay introduced by recalling items; no such change, with a trend to decreasing recency, is observed in delayed recall. Simulations are presented, showing that 2 models accounting for recency in free recall, the temporal context model (M. W. Howard & M. J. Kahana, 2002) and the SIMPLE model (G. D. A. Brown, I. Neath, & N. Chater, 2007), are unable to account for this novel pattern of data. Further simulations show that the results are consistent with a short-term buffer contributing to recency in immediate free recall and that ordered probing of items may also contribute to this effect; both of these are consistent with the formulation of a short-term buffer akin to models of serial recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A common basis for recency effects in immediate and delayed recall.

Examined the effects of word frequency and list length on the long-term serial position curve in 2 experiments, using a total of 68 undergraduates. In Exp I, the object was to find a distractor activity that would be sufficient to eliminate the recency effect in conventional free recall. In Exp II, whether list length would show a similar pattern of effects in a continuous-distractor paradigm was examined. Results demonstrate that word frequency and list length had the same effects on the serial-position curve in the continuous-distractor paradigm of delayed recall that they had previously been shown to have in immediate recall. High word frequency and shorter lists led to improved recall of preterminal items but did not influence recall of terminal items. Results suggest that the same processes underlie recency effects in the 2 paradigms and that accounts that attribute recency effects to primary (or short-term) memory are inadequate. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unmixing effects of spacing on free recall.

In 3 unmixed-list free-recall experiments, total recall was as high for lists that contained massed repetitions as for those containing spaced repetitions. This finding and differences between spaced and massed lists in the pattern of recall (notably serial position differences) indicate that displaced rehearsal (review of earlier list items) was more prevalent during study of the massed lists. These results imply that displaced rehearsal has a large role in producing the free-recall advantage typically observed for spaced compared with massed items in mixed lists and that unmixed-list designs generally are to be preferred for spacing experiments. They also imply that intentional free-recall experiments are not instructive concerning effects of spaced vs massed study, because rehearsal strategies for free recall result in the spaced study of massed items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual variability and serial position effects in free recall.

In immediate free recall, words recalled successively tend to come from nearby serial positions. M. J. Kahana (see record 1996-93836-009) documented this effect and showed that this tendency, which the authors refer to as the lag recency effect, is well described by a variant of the search of associative memory (SAM) model (J. G. W. Raaijmakers & R. M. Shiffrin, 1980, 1981). In 2 experiments, participants performed immediate, delayed, and continuous distractor free recall under conditions designed to minimize rehearsal. The lag recency effect, previously observed in immediate free recall, was also observed in delayed and continuous distractor free recall. Although two-store memory models, such as SAM, readily account for the end-of-list recency effect in immediate free recall, and its attenuation in delayed free recall, these models fail to account for the long-term recency effect. By means of analytic simulations, the authors show that both the end of list recency effect and the lag recency effect, across all distractor conditions, can be explained by a single-store model in which context, retrieved with each recalled item, serves as a cue for subsequent recalls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Isolation effects, free recall, and organization.

Studied the influence of isolated words upon free recall and clustering of categorized lists. For Exp. I with 104 undergraduates, the list contained 10 words from each of 4 conceptual categories and the category names, and for Exp. II with 96 Ss, 11 members of 4 categories and no names. Category members were presented in blocked or random order for 4 presentation-recall periods. Isolation effects occurred for random presentation with either category names or members as isolates. The superior recall of isolates was at the expense of other words in the list. Clustering of the categories with an isolate or for the over-all list was not affected by isolates, indicating that they did not influence the organization of the lists. Recall and clustering with block presentation were superior to random presentation. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age effects in cued recall: Sources from implicit and explicit memory.

In 2 experiments, young and old adults were compared on cued recall using direct and indirect test instructions. Participants studied words under an incidental orienting task of rating each word for concreteness. Test cues were meaningfully related to the targets, and participants used them either to recall the studied word (direct test) or to generate a related word (indirect test). Target words and test cues varied in the number of associates linked to them prior to the laboratory experience, and effects of the size of the sets of associates were used as indicators of implicit memory search. Age differences were observed in the effects of target and cue set size as well as in the effects of type of test instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reverse-interference effect in free recall.

D. J. Burns (1989) demonstrated that free recall of second-list response terms was better in an interference (A–B, A–C) condition than in a control (D–B, A–C) condition. This reversal of the traditional interference effect was referred to as the reverse-interference effect. Results from Experiments 2–4 in this article discounted several possible explanations of the reverse-interference effect, and the results from Experiments 5–7 supported a stimulus accessibility account of the reverse-interference effect. That is, when asked for free recall of the response terms, participants covertly retrieved stimulus terms to serve as cues for the responses. The reverse-interference effect reflects the greater accessibility of stimulus terms in the interference condition than in the control condition (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using overt rehearsals to explain word frequency effects in free recall.

Three experiments examined the word frequency effect in free recall using the overt rehearsal methodology. Experiment 1 showed that lists of exclusively high-frequency (HF) words were better recalled, were rehearsed more, and were rehearsed to more recent serial positions than low-frequency (LF) words. A small HF advantage remained even when these 2 variables were equated. Experiment 2 showed that all these effect, were much reduced with mixed lists containing both HF and LF words. Experiment 3 compared pure and mixed lists in a within-subject design and confirmed the findings of Experiments 1 and 2. It is argued that number of rehearsals, recency of rehearsals, and strength of interitem association cause the word frequency effect in free recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Primacy and recency effects in nonhuman primates.

The reports of primacy and recency memory effects in nonhuman primates have been criticized because they have all used an initiating response. That is, the presentation of the to-be-remembered list of items was always contingent on a response being initiated by the nonhuman primate. It has been argued that this initiating response improves performance for early items in the list, resulting in the occurrence of the primacy effect, independent of any memory processing mechanism. This criticism was addressed in the present study by not using an initiating response prior to the presentation of the list. Nevertheless, both a primacy and a recency effect were observed in all 6 rhesus monkeys evaluated using a serial probe recognition task. Thus, the results are similar to those for humans, in that both primacy and recency effects can be obtained in nonhuman primates. A brief literature review is included, and it is proposed that the primacy and recency effects observed in humans, nonhuman primates, and infraprimates can be explained within the context of the configural-association theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of subject-generated and experimenter-provided memory tags on free recall.

64 children from Grades 2 and 5 participated in a recall task. There were 4 instructional conditions distinguished by the type of retrieval cue: sign, subcategory, supracategory, and control. The task required that the Ss image and recall items from 6 successively presented sets of categorized pictorial stimuli. These categories, however, were not mentioned; instead, a sign representing an activity for each set was emphasized as the retrieval cue. Significant effects of grade and of condition, favoring the subcategory condition, were determined by ANOVA. The results, based upon total recall as well as items-per-category and category recall, are discussed in relation to E. Tulving and M. J. Watkins's (see record 1975-26816-001) encoding specificity principle, A. Paivio's (1971) 2-process theory of memory, and F. I. Craik and R. S. Lockhart's (see record 1973-20189-001) levels-of-processing approach to memory. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clustering and organization in free recall.

Evaluated various indexes developed to measure clustering and subjective organization and presents 2 intercorrelation matrices among clustering measures and the number of words recalled. The existence of a large negative bias in the correlation between the ratio of repetition measure and theoretical recall was demonstrated. Various issues which have developed from the study of organization in free recall are discussed. (3 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generation effects in free recall: Further support for a three-factor theory.

A framework is presented that helps explain and predict generation effects in free recall (for between-Ss manipulations of generating vs reading). When the targets share common features and when that shared information is salient to Ss, Ss will exploit that information to help generate the target items. This produces more relational processing among the targets (relative to reading), enhancing free recall. Consistent with this idea, when shared information (among targets) was salient, generation effects in free recall were found under encoding conditions that can disrupt generation effects in cued recall (e.g., pairing targets with unrelated cues). Further, within the same list, generation effects emerged in free recall for targets that were processed after shared information became evident but not for targets processed prior to the availability of the shared information. In recognition, generation effects were found for targets regardless of when they were processed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness and semantic repetition effects in free recall: Evidence for dual-coding theory.

Tested the prediction of A. Paivio's (1971, 1976) dual-coding model, which states that semantic-repetition effects will be obtained for concrete but not abstract words. Dual-coding theory also asserts that semantic equivalents are encoded as a combination of separate verbal representations for all words and common imaginal representations for concrete equivalents. 96 undergraduates recalled a list that contained no-repetition, synonym-repetition, and identical-repetition items, half of which were concrete and half of which were abstract. Results show that, for concrete words, recall of synonym- and identical-repetition items did not differ significantly, and both conditions facilitated recall relative to no-repetition items. For abstract words, however, recall of synonym- and no-repetition items did not differ significantly, whereas identical-repetition items facilitated recall relative to both of these conditions. Findings support the prediction and demonstrate the importance of concreteness in semantic-repetition effects. (French abstract) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mnemonic organization and free recall in schizophrenia.

Investigated word-storage structure and processes of organization and retrieval in 17 young schizophrenics (mean age 26.5 yrs) and 13 normal Ss (mean age 25.7 yrs). Ss were required to establish a stable organization of 25 unrelated words through repeated, self-paced sortings into self-determined categories. Subsequently, they were asked for free recall of the words. The schizophrenics required significantly more trials to complete the sorting task, but once this was achieved they recalled as many words in equally regular order as the normals did. The groups did not differ in regard to organizational structure in the sortings as assessed by hierarchical structure analysis. It is concluded that a schizophrenic deficit of mnemonic organization is indicated, possibly due to difficulties in maintaining a stable system of categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The measurement of subjective organization in free recall.

Presents and discusses alternative measures of subjective organization. Various criteria for choosing among measures are compared, and 4 psychometric criteria are proposed: quantification, reliability, construct validity, and empirical validity. It is demonstrated that with respect to these criteria, the bidirectional form of intertrial repetition, here referred to as pair frequency, is the last measure of subjective organization now available. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Serial organization and prior free recall.

Assessed serial recall and organization of a list after different levels of prior free-recall learning with the same list. Performance was expected to be impaired as a direct function of amount of free recall because of inappropriate organizational units formed during free recall. Recall on serial trials following 15 free-recall trials was inferior to 5 or 10 prior free-recall trials. 4 groups of 24 Ss each were tested. Serial organization on the 1st serial trial was inferior if prior free recall occurred, but did not vary with the amount of free recall. These results, and those of part-whole and whole-part free-recall transfer studies, were interpreted by a component analysis of free recall, including response learning/unlearning and organizational learning/unlearning. (16 ref.) (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of differential encoding and feature overlap accounts of typicality effects in free recall.

Examined 2 accounts (the differential-encoding vs feature-overlap account) of the typicality effect in free recall. 64 students were assigned to 1 of 4 conditions (no cue, category cue, property cue, unrelated word), with half the Ss in each condition being presented with typical items and the other half given atypical items. Results support the feature overlap account. Providing a cue that emphasized the features of a category attenuated the difference in free recall accuracy and organization between typical and atypical items. Although number of items recalled increased by presentation of a typical list, the clustering measure appeared most affected by the typicality manipulation. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)