Free Recall Study Research Articles

Collective memory and social representations of history in Americas, Europe and Palestine

This article reviews and synthesizes 10 free-recall studies on collective memory carried out in Latin America, Europe, and Palestine. Results show the high prevalence of the topics of politics, collective violence and warfare, but around 50% of recalled events were appraised as positives, disconfirming a negative bias in collective memory. However, in Palestine most of the events were entirely or partially negative, reflecting country’s conflictual situation. The analyzed studies confirm a partial socio-centrism: in Latin America and Palestine most events were national. A meta-analysis confirms a generational effect in 24/100 historical events. Negative historical events were related to low social wellbeing in Palestine. Results are discussed in the framework of collective memory processes and social representations of history.

The MUSOS (MUsic SOftware System) Toolkit: A computer-based, open source application for testing memory for melodies.

Despite numerous innovative studies, rates of replication in the field of music psychology are extremely low (Frieler et al., 2013). Two key methodological challenges affecting researchers wishing to administer and reproduce studies in music cognition are the difficulty of measuring musical responses, particularly when conducting free-recall studies, and access to a reliable set of novel stimuli unrestricted by copyright or licensing issues. In this article, we propose a solution for these challenges in computer-based administration. We present a computer-based application for testing memory for melodies. Created using the software Max/MSP (Cycling '74, 2014a), the MUSOS (Music Software System) Toolkit uses a simple modular framework configurable for testing common paradigms such as recall, old-new recognition, and stem completion. The program is accompanied by a stimulus set of 156 novel, copyright-free melodies, in audio and Max/MSP file formats. Two pilot tests were conducted to establish the properties of the accompanying stimulus set that are relevant to music cognition and general memory research. By using this software, a researcher without specialist musical training may administer and accurately measure responses from common paradigms used in the study of memory for music.

Adaptive memory: Temporal, semantic, and rating-based clustering following survival processing

Abstract Processing items for their survival relevance often produces a robust memory advantage. The current experiments assessed possible proximate mechanisms responsible for this advantage by assessing output strategies during free recall. Previous research has shown that item clustering during recall can provide diagnostic information about the structure of representations in episodic memory, particularly the encoding of temporal, semantic, and source information. Following survival processing and moving or pleasantness controls, measures of temporal and semantic clustering were generated. A robust recall advantage was found for survival processing, but no evidence for temporal clustering was detected. Above-chance levels of semantic clustering were obtained, but there were no differences between the survival and control conditions. An additional clustering measure based on scenario-based relevance ratings also failed to explain recall differences, as did absolute and relative measures of remembered temporal position. Our results indicate that neither enhanced temporal coding nor increased semantic processing among the items on the study list can easily explain the oft-replicated survival processing advantage. Our results also suggest that the ubiquitous temporal clustering patterns seen in free recall studies may be a product, in part, of using intentional learning and multiple study trials.

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context.

Memory is often better for emotional rather than neutral stimuli. The benefit for emotional items could be the result of an associative mechanism whereby items are associated to a slowly updating context. Through this process, emotional features are integrated with context during study, and are reactivated during test. The presence of emotion in context would both provide a stronger retrieval cue, enhancing memory of emotional items, as well as lead to emotional clustering, whereby emotionally similar items are recalled consecutively. To measure whether associative mechanisms can explain the enhancement for emotional items, we conducted a free recall study in which most items were emotionally neutral to minimize effects of mood induction and to more closely reflect naturalistic settings. We found that emotional items were significantly more likely to be recalled than neutral items and that participants were more likely to transition between emotional items rather than between emotional and neutral items. Together, these results suggest that contextual encoding and retrieval mechanisms may drive the benefit for emotional items both within and outside the laboratory.

Applying how adults rehearse to understand how rehearsal may develop.

OPINION article Front. Psychol., 07 January 2015Sec. Developmental Psychology Volume 5 - 2014 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01538

Individual differences in memory search and their relation to intelligence.

Attempts to understand why memory predicts intelligence have not fully leveraged state-of-the-art measures of recall dynamics. Using data from a multisession free recall study, we examine individual differences in measures of recall initiation and postinitiation transitions. We identify 4 sources of variation: a recency factor reflecting variation in the tendency to initiate recall from an item near the end of the list, a primacy factor reflecting a tendency to initiate from the beginning of the list, a temporal factor corresponding to transitions mediated by temporal associations, and a semantic factor corresponding to semantically mediated transitions. Together, these 4 factors account for 83% of the variability in overall recall accuracy, suggesting they provide a nearly complete picture of recall dynamics. We also show that these sources of variability account for over 80% of the variance shared between memory and intelligence. The temporal association factor was the most influential in predicting both recall accuracy and intelligence. We outline a theory of how controlled drift of temporal context may be critical across a range of cognitive activities.

Delineating the contribution of long-term associations to immediate recall

In the present study we examined the contribution of semantic associative links to short-term recall performance by using the separation effect first introduced in free recall studies (Glanzer, 1969). Pairs of associated words were inserted in the to-be-remembered lists. In two experiments associated words were better recalled than non-associated words, and were better recalled when they were adjacent in the list than when they were separated by one non-associated item. In addition results showed that forward associative links among pair members were as beneficial to immediate serial recall as backward associative links. Finally the benefit of associative links among pair members was observed with both forward and backward recall.

The temporal contiguity effect predicts episodic memory performance

One way to study the associative processes at work during episodic memory is to examine the order of participant responses, which reveal the strong tendency to transition between temporally contiguous or semantically proximal items on the study list. Here, we assessed the correlation between participants' recall performance and their use of semantic and temporal associations to guide retrieval across nine delayed free recall studies. The size of the participants' temporal contiguity effects predicted their recall performance. When interpreted in terms of two models of episodic memory, these results suggest that participants who more effectively form and retrieve associations between items that occur nearby in time perform better on episodic recall tasks. Sample code may be downloaded as a supplement for this article from http://mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Dissociating conditional recency in immediate and delayed free recall: A challenge for unitary models of recency.

Temporal distinctiveness models of recency in free recall predict that increasing the delay between the end of sequence and attempting recall of items from that sequence will reduce recency. An empirical dissociation is reported here that violates this prediction when the delay is introduced by the act of recall itself. Analysis of data from a number of previously published free recall studies shows that when the assumed availability of final list items is taken into account, recency increases across the first few output positions in immediate recall despite the delay introduced by recalling items; no such change, with a trend to decreasing recency, is observed in delayed recall. Simulations are presented, showing that 2 models accounting for recency in free recall, the temporal context model (M. W. Howard & M. J. Kahana, 2002) and the SIMPLE model (G. D. A. Brown, I. Neath, & N. Chater, 2007), are unable to account for this novel pattern of data. Further simulations show that the results are consistent with a short-term buffer contributing to recency in immediate free recall and that ordered probing of items may also contribute to this effect; both of these are consistent with the formulation of a short-term buffer akin to models of serial recall.

Children and adults are differentially affected by presentation modality in the DRM paradigm

AbstractUsing the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) method for free recall, we examined mode of list presentation and association type in 8–9 year old children and adults. Participants verbally recalled lists of associates that were presented orally (Experiment 1) or visually (Experiment 2). Lists consisted of semantic associates (e.g. hound, puppy, etc.), phonological associates (e.g. log, dot, etc.) and both semantic and phonological associates (e.g. hound, dot, etc.) to a nonpresented lure word (e.g. dog). Interestingly, the ratio of false to true recall was higher in children than adults only when lists were presented orally. These results suggest that children rely more on sublexical information or item‐specific information than adults when reading lists, and, thus, are less likely to activate the critical lure via lexical associations. Furthermore, these results suggest that information processing differences at encoding between children and adults need to be taken into account when interpreting free recall studies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Free Recall in Williams Syndrome: is there a Dissociation Between Short-and Long-Term Memory?

Two experiments used the free recall paradigm to investigate verbal memory abilities in Williams syndrome (WS) – a rare genetic disorder. In an earlier free recall study, Vicari et al. (1996a) reported that, unlike TD controls, children with WS showed a recency effect but failed to show a primacy effect. These authors interpreted their findings as evidence for a dissociation between relatively strong verbal short-term memory and relatively impaired verbal long-term memory. In Experiment 1 of the current study, children with WS and TD controls showed comparable improvements in performance with repeated testing of the same material, indicating similar long-term learning of the test items. Neither group showed evidence of primacy effects. However, the extent of primacy effects in free recall is known to depend on the rehearsal strategy that participants adopt. In Experiment 2, therefore, participants were encouraged to engage in overt cumulative rehearsal. This manipulation resulted in significant and comparable primacy effects in both groups, although neither group demonstrated a significant change in overall performance. There was therefore no evidence from either experiment for a dissociation between short- and long-term verbal memory in WS.

Concurrent task effects on memory retrieval.

Previous studies combining continuous free recall with a concurrent task have generally shown that concurrent tasks impose fairly negligible effects on memory retrieval. By contrast, dual-task studies employing either cued recall or semantic retrieval reveal gross memory impairment and suggest that retrieval is delayed by the centrally demanding phase of the concurrent tasks (i.e., response selection). To explore this conflict, subjects performed continuous free recall while carrying out a serial-choice-response time (RT) task, as in the previous free recall studies. Unlike these previous studies, however, the choice-RT task utilized arbitrary stimulus-response mappings in order to increase the proportion of time devoted to the centrally demanding response selection phase. Recall total was reduced significantly, and recall latency was slowed substantially.

The effects of word co-occurrence on short-term memory: associative links in long-term memory affect short-term memory performance.

In immediate serial recall tasks, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency words. This has been attributed to high-frequency words' being better represented and providing more effective support to a redintegration process at retrieval (C. Hulme et al., 1997). In studies of free recall, there is evidence that frequency of word co-occurrence, rather than word frequency per se, may explain the recall advantage enjoyed by high-frequency words (J. Deese, 1960). The authors present evidence that preexposing pairs of low-frequency words, so as to create associative links between them, has substantial beneficial effects on immediate serial recall performance. These benefits, which are not attributable to simple familiarization with the words per se, do not occur for high-frequency words. These findings indicate that associative links between items in long-term memory have important effects on short-term memory performance and suggest that the effects of word frequency in short-term memory tasks are related to differences in interitem associations in long-term memory.

Effects of ruminative and distracting responses to depressed mood on retrieval of autobiographical memories.

Four studies explored the effects of self-focused rumination vs. distraction on dysphoric and nondysphoric students' retrieval of autobiographical memories. Dysphorics induced to ruminate subsequently recalled more negatively biased autobiographical memories in free recall (Study 1) and in response to prompts for memories (Study 2) than either dysphorics who first distracted themselves from their mood or nondysphoric controls. In Study 3, dysphoric rumination led students to recall negative events as occurring relatively frequently in their lives and positive events as occurring relatively infrequently. In Study 4, judges scored transcripts of participants' thoughts as expressed aloud while engaging in rumination or distraction. Codings revealed that dysphoric ruminators spontaneously generated memories that were more negative than those of the other three groups. Implications of a ruminative response style for progress in therapy, as well as for enhancing dysphoria and negatively biased cognitive processes, are discussed.

Effects of mobilizing prior knowledge on information processing: Studies of free recall and allocation of study time

In this study, three experiments examine the effects of mobilizing prior knowledge on information processing. Subjects generated names of either US presidents or States before studying a relevant list. Study time allocated to different parts of the list and free recall were recorded. In Expt 1, study time was unlimited; no recall differences were found but experimental subjects spent less time studying the material. In Expt 2, total study time was fixed, but subjects were free to allocate the available time to individual items. Experimental subjects spent less time on items in the mobilized category and recalled more items. This facilitative effect of mobilization extended or ‘spilled over’ from mobilized to non‐mobilized information. In Expt 3, where both time for studying individual items and, hence, total study time were fixed, experimental subjects recalled more mobilized category items than controls. These results were interpreted in terms of a cognitive set‐point regulating the amount of time spent on processing different parts of the material. Mobilization reduces the time required to reach criteria set for mobilized category items during study since these items have been processed previously. Finally, these experiments prove that the set‐point hypothesis applies not only to items actually mobilized but also to non‐mobilized same‐category items, probably through a process of spreading activation at mobilization.

Is retrievability grouping good for recall?

Most theories suppose that during unconstrained retrieval easy-to-retrieve items will be accessed before hard-to-retrieve items. Recent free-recall studies have supported a different access order, the cognitive triage pattern, in which hard-to-retrieve items are accessed first. The present experiments demonstrated that this pattern enhances total recall. In Experiments 1-3, clustering type measures of goodness of triage (grouping output according to items' levels of retrievability) predicted total recall in children and adults. In Experiments 4 and 5, goodness-of-triage measures predicted total recall when they were derived from on-line information about retrievability (error-success histories), but not when they were derived from normative information about retrievability (frequency and meaningfulness ratings)

The development of attribute dominance in the knowledge base.

Two cuing, free-recall studies were conducted to test Bach and Underwood's (1970) hypothesis that acoustic encoding is dominant among second graders and semantic encoding is dominant among sixth graders. When retrieval cues were presented with to-be-remembered items at both input and output (Experiment 1), and when cues were presented only at output (Experiment 2), semantic cues were more efficient in elevating recall than were acoustic cues for both second and sixth graders. When these and other results generally found using recognition, sorting, incidental learning, and free-recall experimental designs are compared, it seems plausible that item presentation and memory-testing formats interact with age, and that these factors account for the different patterns of attribute dominance found in the literature. The knowledge base cannot be understood by focusing on either subject or task analyses, but only by focusing on interactions between subject and task variables as they change over time. The educational implications for young grade-school children are discussed.

Retrieval Influences on Tests for the Automaticity of the Encoding of Temporal Order Information

Replication and extension of the study on the automatic nature of the encoding of temporal order information conducted by Zacks, Hasher, Alba, Sanft, and Rose (1984) are reported. In Experiment 1, we assessed retrieval influences during the performance of the temporal order judgment task by monitoring subjects' order of filling in the judgments. Data showed that a change in output order, similar to that observed for recency items in studies of multiple-list free recall, could account for the reported practice effects for temporal order judgments. In Experiment 2, we found no improvement in recency performance when there were experimenter constraints on the order in which the temporal order judgments were assigned. The data are discussed in terms of the methodological problems faced by investigations of the automaticity hypothesis.

Semantics of Ownership: A Free-Recall Study of Property

Adult Canadians (N = 120) evaluated criteria of ownership by two tasks. The first was listing exemplars of things owned and things not owned and then rating applicability of criteria to exemplars. The second was judging the strength of criteria as general arguments for ownership. Cluster analysis suggested that free-recall exemplars of property were selected by four principal types of criteria: (a) control criteria (POSSESSION, ASSERTION, TERRITORIALITY) referring to the regulation of social access to the property, (b) attachment criteria (FAMILIARITY, KNOWLEDGE, AESTHETICS, UTILITY) expressing the psychological proximity of the owner to the property, (c) consumer criteria (PURCHASE, HISTORY, DESIRE) reflecting important purchases, and (d) special-acquisitions criteria (GIFT, CRAFTING). By the judgement task, only means-of-acquisition criteria (PURCHASE, CRAFTING, GIFT) were valued as strong arguments for ownership.

Facilitation of learning and state dependency with nicotine.

Two studies of nicotine and memory encoding were carried out using a state-dependent design. The first experiment used cigarettes and involved memory for stimuli that could not be encoded phonemically or semantically. The results of this recognition study show that nicotine was facilitating the input of non-phonemicably encodable and non-semanticably encodable information to storage and that nicotine produced state-dependent learning. The second study used nicotine tablets and involved memory for concrete words. The results of the free recall study show that nicotine produced state-dependent learning, that nicotine was facilitating the input of information to storage, but there was no evidence that associative processes had been changed by nicotine. These findings give no support for the suggestion that a cholinergic system in the brain is controlling the encoding of intrinsic cues relating to phonemic and semantic properties of things but not those involving mnemonic encoding by mental imagery, but rather that the cholinergic system is non-specifically involved in encoding.