Retention interval, response competition and word familiarity effects in primed fragment completion

Abstract

Abstract Retention interval is a variable for which functional dissociations between implicit memory tasks have been demonstrated. In Experiments 1A and 1B, the hypothesis was tested that the effect of retention interval on repetition priming depends on whether the test cues are specific to the target items or not. Subjects were given a word-fragment completion test with fragments that permitted either single or multiple solutions. There was, however, no evidence for differential forgetting for the two types of cues. Experiment 2 gave partial support to the hypothesis that differential forgetting between word completion tasks may instead be due to differences in the base familiarity of the solution words.