To-be-remembered Research Articles

A negative order-repetition priming effect: Inhibition of order in unattended auditory sequences?

A novel negative priming (NP) effect is reported in which serial recall for a sequence of visually presented digits was poorer if the same sequence was presented as an irrelevant auditory sequence on the previous trial (Experiments 1 and 2). The effect was enhanced when attention was divided between the to-be-repeated auditory sequence and the concurrent to-be-remembered (TBR) sequence (Experiment 3). When the TBR sequences were also presented auditorily, NP arose only when the repeated TBR sequence was in the same voice as the previous irrelevant sequence; a voice mismatch produced positive priming (Experiment 4). The results suggest that the order of auditory events is registered preattentively and that inhibition may be applied to the acoustic transitions between irrelevant events.

The Disruption and Dissolution of Directed Forgetting: Inhibitory Control of Memory

In a series of directed-forgetting (DF) experiments it was found that inhibition of a to-be-forgotten (TBF) list could be disrupted by a secondary task and completely abolished by a concurrent memory load during second to-be-remembered (TBR) list learning. Similarly, inhibition was found to be wholly abolished when the TBF and TBR list were strongly associated but not when weakly associated. These findings suggest that inhibition in the DF procedure depends on how powerfully the second TBR list competes in memory with the representation of the TBF list. When the representation of the TBR list is impoverished or when it is too similar to the TBF list then competition is weak and inhibition is as a consequence weak or does not occur at all.

The Development of Efficient Inhibition: Evidence from Directed-Forgetting Tasks

The purposes of this paper are (1) to end the confusion over the mechanisms producing directed-forgetting effects in the three methods of cuing items in directed-forgetting tasks, (2) to highlight the role of inhibition in blocked and “only” cued directed-forgetting tasks, and (3) to review and reinterpret the developmental directed-forgetting literature within an inhibition framework. We argue that item-by-item cued directed-forgetting tasks manipulate selective rehearsal to produce greater recall of to-be-remembered (TBR) than to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. In contrast, both blocked and “only” cued directed-forgetting tasks manipulate retrieval inhibition, a form of cognitive inhibition, to produce the suppression of TBF items. The current developmental directed-forgetting literature is reviewed and reinterpreted in light of this framework. It is concluded that in item-by-item tasks children can produce directed-forgetting effects using selective rehearsal by second grade. In blocked and “only” cued directed-forgetting tasks children can produce directed-forgetting effects as early as third grade in some instances, but usually not until fifth grade. Future directions for research on cognitive inhibition, especially its role in the investigation of repressed memories, are also discussed.

Relative Association, Interactiveness, and the Bizarre Imagery Effect

The memory advantage for bizarre images over common images was investigated as a function of two stimulus conditions: (a) the relative association between to-be-remembered (TBR) items, and (b) the relationship between the action and TBR items, or the interactiveness. In Experiment 1, the relative association between the TBR items was manipulated. Free-recall performance indicated a significant bizarre imagery effect for strongly related TBR items, but a commonness effect for weakly associated TBR items. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 investigated differences in memory recall of bizarre images as a function of the type of immediate cued-recall test used (subject; predicate) and the method of constructing bizarre sentence stimuli (noun order change method; predicate change method). Predicate cued-recall performance indicated a significant bizarre imagery effect for both stimulus construction methods (Exps. 2 and 4). However, subject cued-recall performance did not yield a significant bizarre imagery effect for the noun order change method (Exp. 3). The results indicate that the bizarre imagery effect can be manipulated as a function of the level of association and interactiveness between the TBR items. In addition to defining stimulus conditions necessary for the bizarre imagery effect, the results suggest that a relational mechanism underlies the bizarre imagery effect.

The development of taxonomic structure in lexical memory

Is there a shift from schematic to taxonomic organization in lexical memory from the preschool to the adult years (e.g., Nelson, 1982)? In two cued recall studies, subjects in five different cue conditions were presented with the same tobe-remembered (TBR) items. In different conditions, cures were related to the TBR items either schematically (zoo-elephant) or taxonomically. Three kinds of taxonomic cues were used: superordinate (animal-elephant), slot-filler (monkey-elephant), and coordinate (cat-elephant). Cues and TBR items were selected for their salience, familiarity, and meaningfulness to subjects on the basis of extensive pilot interviews with peers. Schematic and superordinate cues were most effective in aiding recall, and coordinate cues were least effective, for both preschoolers and kindergartners in Experiment 1, and for both preschoolers and college students in Experiment 2. Thus, the relative strength of different kinds of relationships, as reflected in cued recall performance, does not appear to change with age. The findings are consistent with the view that lexical memory is both schematically and taxonomically organized from early childhood.

Memory for spatial location in two-dimensional arrays

Memory for spatial location in a two-dimensional display was studied in two experiments by means of a recognition task. The first experiment investigated the effects of presenting multiple reference points at the same time as sequentially shown to-be-remembered (TBR) locations. In the second experiment, the TBR locations were presented either one by one or four at a time with and without multiple reference points. The reference points tended to decrease the false alarm rate during acquisition, rather than to increase the hit rate, which suggests that they affected the precision rather than the amount of systematic bias in memory for the locations. Similar effects were obtained when the TBR locations were presented four at a time. The reference points were also found to serve as effective retrieval cues in a final recognition test. Reference points may thus facilitate both acquisition and retrieval of information about spatial location.

Echoic and Retrieval Accounts of the Long-Term Modality Effect Tested Using the Suffix Procedure

The long-term modality effect is the advantage in recall of the last of a list of auditory to-be-remembered (TBR) items compared with the last of a list of visual TBR items when the list is followed by a filled retention interval. If the auditory advantage is due to echoic sensory memory mechanisms, then recall of the last auditory TBR item should be substantially reduced when it is followed by a redundant, not-to-be-recalled auditory suffix. Contrary to this prediction, Experiment 1 demonstrated that a redundant auditory suffix does not significantly reduce recall of the last auditory TBR item. In Experiment 2 a nonredundant auditory suffix produced a large reduction in the last auditory item. Redundancy is not the only factor controlling the effectiveness of a suffix, however. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a nonredundant visual suffix does not reduce recall of the last auditory TBR item. These results are discussed in reference to a retrieval account of the long-term modality effect.

A retrieval account of the long-term modality effect.

When to-be-remembered (TBR) word pairs are separated by distractor activity, recall of the last few audibly presented pairs is greater than recall of the last few visually presented pairs. The effect is found even after a considerably long distractor-filled retention interval. Five experiments disconfirm echoic storage, short-term storage and long-term storage accounts of these effects, as well as demonstrating that the effect is not an artifact of differential use of a recency-first output strategy. The data are generally consistent with the proposition that retrieval is disrupted by modality-specific similarity between to-be-remembered items and distractor information.

Recall failure following successful generation and recognition of responses by alcoholic Korsakoff patients

Amnesic Korsakoff patients and controls were presented with twelve words, each shown individually in the presence of a weak associate. They were then asked to freely associate to 12 other words that were strong associates of the to-be-remembered (TBR) words. The Korsakoff patients generated, and were able to recognize, as many of the TBR words as the controls. Yet, in spite of this recognition ability, these same patients were subsequently unable to recall the critical TBR words when the weak cues were again presented. A follow-up study found that the same recognition results could be obtained with Korsakoffs months after initial presentation suggesting that the patients might initially have “recognized” the most highly associated words simply because they represented the most probable choices. Intermediate association prompts failed to generate correct responses. It was hypothesized that the Korsakoff patients cannot restructure their semantic associative hierarchy during input in such a way as to become sensitized to other than the strongest associates as prompts during recall.

Encoding specificity and modality effects in episodic memory

A modified Brown-Peterson paradigm was employed to determine the extent to which proactive interference effects of a sensory nature would influence the occurrence of sensory encoding specificity effects in episodic memory. Subjects presented with an auditory or a visual study list of five to-be-remembered (TBR) words engaged in either an auditory or a visual arithmetic distractor task for 30 s, and then received the first word in the study list as an auditory or visual intralist retrieval cue or received no cue. Presentation of the intralist retrieval cue in the modality of the study list enhanced the effectiveness of the retrieval cue, whereas presentation of the retrieval cue in the modality of the distractor task decreased the effectiveness of the retrieval cue. Sensory encoding specificity effects were largest when the distractor task occurred in the modality opposite to the modality in which both the study list and the retrieval cue were presented.

Test-expectancy and word-frequency effects in recall and recognition.

To determine if people who expect a recall (RCL) test encode a list of to-beremembered (TBR) words differently than those who expect a recognition (RON) test, people were first induced to expect a RCL or a RON test and then were asked to remember a critical list consisting of both high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words. Following presentation of the critical list, different groups received either an expected RCL test, an unexpected RCL test, an expected RON test, or an unexpected RON test. There were two main results: (a) People who expected RCL did better in both RCL and RON than did people who expected RON, but to a much greater degree for HF than LF words, (b) The standard word-frequency effect was obtained; namely, HF words were better recalled but more poorly recognized than LF words. These data were interpreted within the framework of Anderson and Bower's generaterecognize theory as indicating that, compared to people expecting a RON test, people expecting a RCL test more variably encode the semantic interpretations of the TBR word. The implications that these data have for Glanzer and Bowies' theory of the word-frequency effect and for classroom examinations were also discussed.

The role of sensory attributes as retrieval cues or as interference in retrieval of information from episodic memory.

The sensoty attributes of to-be-remembered (TBR) events and of distractor stimuli were systematically manipulated (both within and between modalities) in two Brown-Peterson tasks [experiments 1 (N = 40 male and female university students or faculty) and 2 (N - 22 male and female undergraduates)] and in a delayed recognition task (Experiment 1). Performance on these recall and recognition tasks (in which the semantic attributes of the TBR events were relatively controlled) was consistent with episodic theory. Memory of an event was reasonably completely described in terms of (a) the degree of overlap between the perceptible properties of the retrieval environment and of the memory trace of the event and (b) the perceptible similarities between the memory trace of the event and the traces of information encoded temporally adjacent to it. These sensory encoding specificity effects (as well as other research reviewed) were interpreted as demonstrations that a semantic interpretation of the encoding specificity principle cannot account for all encoding specificity phenomena.

Retrieval of pictures and words from long-term memory: Effects upon short-term memory

On each of a series of Brown-Peterson short-term memory (STM) tests, the presentation of a verbal to-be-remembered (TBR) item (a five-letter quintogram in Experiment 1 and an eight-letter octogram in Experiment 2) was followed immediately by a 10-sec retention interval. During the retention interval, subjects recalled and reproduced previously learned paired associate response triads that consisted of three concrete pictures, concrete words, abstract pictures, or abstract words. Following selective retrieval of one of the four types of response triads from long-term memory (LTM), subjects attempted to recall the TBR items from STM. In both experiments, the intervening retrieval of abstract words resulted in significantly poorer retention of the TBR items than did the intervening retrieval of concrete words; the retrieval of concrete words resulted, in turn, in significantly poorer retention of the TBR items than did the retrieval of concrete or abstract pictures. Retrieval of the latter two types of materials appeared not to interfere with the short-term retention of the TBR verbal material (i.e., the quintograms and octograms). The results reflect the occurrence of selective interference effects, and, except for one discrepant finding, appear to be consistent with Paivio’s 11971) dual-coding hypothesis and Shiffrin and Schneider’s (1977) general theory of memory.

The Basis and Implications of the Restoration of a Recency Effect in Immediate Serial Recall

When a spoken presentation of a supra-span sequence of to-be-remembered (TBR) items is followed immediately by a similarly-spoken non-TBR item (stimulus suffix) the typical salience of the terminal item in recall is almost destroyed. However, Salter (1975) observed restoration of salience when pre-terminal and terminal TBR items differed in category membership. Five experiments are reported which aimed to clarify the basis and locus of Salter's effect. Survival of salience for the heterogeneous item was found under the following conditions: with the occurrence of the item unpredictable from trial-to-trial (Experiment I); with enforced processing of the suffix (Experiment II); with performance of a secondary task during list presentation (Experiment III); with the requirement to retain both the location and identity of the item (Experiment IV); and with the item as the terminal member of a non-suffixed visual list (Experiment V). It is argued that the effect has a postcategorical locus, and that its origin is not in better registration (mediated by selective attention), but, rather, in the enhancement of retrieval (mediated by access to distinctive information encoded during presentation). It is suggested that the latter hypothesis may have wide application in accounting for many kinds of salience.

A Test of Precategorical and Attentional Explanations of Speech Suffix Interference

It is well-known that a redundant item or “stimulus suffix”, which does not have to be recalled, which is spoken, and which terminates the presentation of a beyond span-length sequence of to-be-remembered (TBR) spoken items, will generate considerable interference in immediate serial recall. Previous work has established that speech suffix interference is not influenced by a number of intrinsic attributes of the suffix. A limitation of this work, however, is the fact that in each study there has been little if any disparity between TBR sequence and suffix in terms of extrinsic attributes. Experiment I extends this work and showed that at least one intrinsic attribute of the suffix (personal significance) has no effect on suffix interference when there is also a marked disparity between TBR sequence and suffix in terms of one specific extrinsic attribute (spatial location). Experiment II simply served to eliminate one possible artifactual explanation of this finding. The result appears to have some theoretical importance since it is inconsistent with Kahneman's (1973) attentional account of suffix interference and with one interpretation of a precategorical hypothesis due to Morton, Crowder and Prussin (1971).

Constituent processes in the differentiation of items in memory.

Three experiments were designed to clarify the perplexing ability of subjects to discriminate between to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items in memory. After the presentation of each pair of words in a list, subjects were first required to solve one to four arithmetic problems and were then cued whether to remember or forget that pair. When subjects were free to use a remember (R) or forget (F) cue in any way they saw fit, their subsequent ability to differentiate TBR and TBF items was impressive, but when subjects were required to retrieve both TBR and TBF word pairs in response to an R or F cue, respectively, their subsequent ability to differentiate TBR and TBF items deteriorated. The results implicate within-list retrieval of TBR items as a potent tagging or strengthening operation that provides a basis on which those items may later be discriminated from TBF items. The potency of such events, in terms of their influence on later recall, depends in a clear-cut way on the depth (i.e., delay) of retrieval involved, but there are no such comparable effects on later recognition.

Effects of sentence ordering on thematic decisions to remember and forget prose

Sentences from each of two different passages were intermixed and presented to subjects auditorily. During each intersentence interval, the subjects made a to-be-remembered (TBR) vs to-be-forgotten (TBF) decision on the basis of theme membership and then selectively rehearsed the TBR sentences for later recall. Presenting either the TBR or TBF sentences in a logical order facilitated sentence recall of both types but had little effect on recognition. The within-subject relationships between decision time and recall were consistent with the between-subject effects of presenting either passage in a logical order on the recall of the remaining passage. Shorter decision times were associated with greater TBR recall but longer decision times were associated with greater TBF recall. It was concluded that processing during the decision phase was different from the maintenance rehearsal found during the TBR-TBF cue-delay interval in directed-forgetting tasks. Ordering of the TBF message did not affect processing if its general theme was not known.

Encoding specificity: Relation between recall superiority and recognition failure.

The results of four experiments show that (a) recall superiority over recognition is reversed by the use of unrelated word pairs in the study list, and (b) the reversal of recall superiority leaves intact the phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words. These results extend the generality of encoding specificity and suggest that although recall superiority is a sufficient condition for recognition failure of recallable words it is not a necessary condition. In memory experiments in which people are required to remember the items of a list, the most effective retrieval cues are almost always nominal copies of to-be-remembe red items. If such cues are ineffective, it is unlikely that any other cues will succeed. Under certain experimental conditions, however, copies of list items are not the most effective cues for retrieval—in the presence of other cues, people do recall learned list words that they fail to recognize. This phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words has been manifested in a number of experiments in which the same procedure, with only minor variations, has been used (e.g., Tulving, 1974; Tulving & Thomson, 1973; Watkins & Tulving, 1975; Wiseman & Tulving, 1975). In these experiments, learners studied a list of pairs of ,associatively related words. One word of each pair was designated as the to-be-remembered (TBR) or target word; the other word was

The fate of to-be-forgotten sentences in semantic positive forgetting

Semantic positive forgetting refers to making to-be-remembered (TBR) vs. to-be-forgotten (TBF) judgments for sequentially presented sentences on the basis of the semantic content of the sentences. Geiselman (1975) has shown that a logical order of presentation for the TBF as well as for the TBR sentences facilitates TBR-sentence recall. The results of the present experiment show that the TBF sentences are also recalled better if presented in a logical order. This paradox of better recall of both TBF and TBR material resulting from the logical ordering of TBF material was interpreted as supporting a “concise-differential-grouping” notion in which sequential organization is said to facilitate the formation of functionally distinct TBR and TBF memory groupings.

Semantic positive forgetting: Another cocktail party problem

In Experiment I, subjects were told to forget 10 of 20 subsequently presented sentences on the basis of nonmembership in an experimenter-designated, to-be-remembered (TBR) theme. The sentences of the TBR and to-be-forgotten (TBF) themes were sequentially presented in an intermixed fashion. Logical orderliness of the sentences within the TBR, within the TBF, or within both sets of 10 sentences facilitated TBR recall. In Experiment II, eye-movement records revealed that TBF sentences were initially encoded more rapidly than TBR sentences; and logically ordered sets of sentences were initially encoded faster than unordered sets of sentences. With both sets of sentences in illogical orders, subjects reported more interference from the TBF sentences during TBR-sentence selective rehearsal than did subjects who received both sets of sentences in their logical orders. Implications of the results for the efficiency of the memory mechanisms involved in semantic positive forgetting are discussed.