Stimulus Similarity vs. Process Similarity in Picture Priming.

Abstract

Abstract : This grant has supported the research training of four graduate students and one undergraduate student in the area of human experimental cognition. Its primary purpose has been to broaden the range of the parent grant, Facilitation and Interference in Identification of Pictures and Words, by exploring more intensively an unexpected finding from the parent research---namely, that both explicit memory (recognition) and implicit memory (fragment completion and picture naming) show identical effects of similarity between study and test forms of the picture stimuli. We have explored two areas of research connected with this question. In the first, we have explored the question of whether the similarity effects occur because of stimulus similarity or process simularity between two sets of items. We have done this by varying whether the fragments presented at study and test are the same or not, and by whether the level of fragmentation between study and test is the same or not. This line of research has culminated in a paper published in Memory and Cognition (Snodgrass, Hischman and Fan).