| Abstract: | Exp 1 replicated I. Yaniv and D. E. Meyer's (1987) finding that lexical decision and episodic recognition performance was better for words previously yielding high-accessibility levels (a combination of feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue ratings) in comparison with those yielding low-accessibility levels in a rare word definition task. Exp 2 yielded the same pattern even though lexical decisions preceded accessibility estimates by a full week. Exp 3 dismissed the possibility that the Exp 2 results may have been due to a long-term influence from the lexical decision task to the rare word judgment task. These results support a model in which Ss (1) retrieve topic familiarity information in making accessibility estimates in the rare word definition task and (2) use this information to modulate lexical decision performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
