The orthographic distinctiveness effect on fragment completion: Not implicit

Abstract

Hunt and Toth (1990) found that, relative to orthographically common words, orthographically distinctive words are both remembered better in free recall and produce greater priming in fragment completion. The present experiments tested whether this greater priming effect was due to better explicit remembering of orthographically distinctive words. Results obtained with both a post-experiment questionnaire and the process-dissociation procedure were consistent with this possibility. The implication of the role of awareness of the memory episode for the transfer-appropriate processing account is discussed.