Recall of a twice-presented item without recall of either presentation: Generic memory for events

Abstract

Evidence is presented for the recall of twice-presented items without recall of either of their individual presentations. Subjects studied a list of verbal items, some of which were presented twice and others once. In order that it could be separately identified, each item presentation was distinguished by a designated attribute, namely, the color in which the presented item was printed (Experiment 1) or a verbal context (Experiments 2 and 3). As indexed by recall of these attributes, the individual presentations of repeated items were found to be less recallable than presentations of nonrepeated items. Nevertheless, recall of the items themselves was increased by repetition to such an extent that recall of a repeated item was more probable than recall of at least one of two nonrepeated items. The implication is that at least some of the repeated items were recalled, not through recollection of one or other of their individual presentations, but rather through recollection of their presentations as pairs. In short, presentation events were recalled generically.