False Recognition of Synonyms of Right and Wrong Items in Multiple-Item Recognition Learning

Abstract

The hypothesis that right items are processed at a featurally deeper level than wrong items was tested. After one, two, or four study trials on a list of paired right and wrong items, subjects were asked to decide whether individual items, including new ones that were synonyms of the prior ones or unrelated to them, were old or new and, if old, had been right or wrong. A false-recognition effect was found for synonyms of both right and wrong items, suggesting that wrong items, as well as right, are processed at a semantic level. However, that effect took more study trials to appear for synonyms of wrong items, reflecting the disparity between right and wrong items in the rates at which their features accrue frequency units. Implicit in Ekstrand, Wallace, and Underwood's (1966) frequency theory of verbal-discrimination learning - that is to say, multiple-item recognition learning - is the assumption that the processing of right items does not differ qualitatively from the processing of wrong items. Processing consists of representational and/or rehearsal responses to items whether they function as right or wrong in the pairs. That is, the processing of right items is distinguishable from the processing of wrong items only in terms of the greater number of responses elicited by right items. It is intuitively ap