STEP: Availability Versus Accessibility of Information in Memory for Words [35320]

This article applies to:
E-Prime 3.0
E-Prime 1.0

 
Detail
Experiment Author: Susan Campbell. Adapted from STEP and used with permission of Brian MacWhinney
 
Experiment Description
This experiment looked at whether people remembered more words from a list than they could name. Participants were given a list of words with category names, then asked to remember them either with or without the category names. The experimenters found that recall was better with the category names.

Experiment Instructions
In this experiment a list of words appears one at a time to participants. Press the spacebar to move on to the next word. Each word also has a category, for example participants see: Transportation - Bus. Remember the word "Bus" not the category, "Transportation". After the list of words is shown, categories appear with a blank next to it. Cueing participants to type in a word previously shown with the category. In another block trials, a list of words appears, and the experiment instructs participants to enter a word without a category shown as a cue. There are 216 trials in this experiment.

Experiment Citation

Tulving, E. and Pearlstone, Z. (1966). Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior 5(4), 381-391.
 
Cited Experiment Abstract

The Ss learned, on a single trial, lists of words belonging to explicitly designated conceptual categories. Lists varied in terms of length (12, 24, and 48 words) and number of words per category (1, 2, and 4). Immediate recall was tested either in presence or absence of category names as retrieval cues. Cued recall was higher than noncued recall, the difference varying directly with list length and inversely with number of items per category. This finding was interpreted as indicating that sufficiently intact memory traces of many words not recalled under the noncued recall conditions were available in the memory storage, but not accessible for retrieval. Further analysis of the data in terms of recall of categories and recall of words within recalled categories suggested two independent retrieval processes, on concerned with the accessibility of higher-order memory units, the other with accessibility of items within higher-order units.
 
Works Cited by the Experiment

Brown, J. Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quart. J. exp. psychol., 1958, 10, 12-21.

Cohen, B.H. Recall of categorized word sets. J. exp. Psychol., 1963, 66, 227-234.

Cohen, B.H. Some-or-none characteristics of coding behavior. J. verb. Learn. verb. Behav., 1966, 5, 182-187.

Cohen, B.H., Bousfield, W.A., and Whitmarsh, G.A. Cultural norms for verbal items in 43 categores. Tech Rep. No. 22, 1957, University of Connecticut.

Feigenbaum, E.A. The simulation of verbal learning behavior. Proc. West. Joint Computer, 1961, 19, 121-132.

Fox, P.W., Blick, K.A., and Bilodeau, K. Stimulation and prediction of verbal recall and misrecall. J. exp. Psychol., 1964, 68, 321-325.

Luh, C.W. The conditions of retention. Psychol. Monogr., 1922, 31, No. 142.

McNemar, Q. Psychological Statistics. (3rd. Ed.) New York: Wiley, 1962.

Melton, A.W. Implications of short-term memory for a general theory of memory. J. verb. Learn. verb. Behav., 1963, 2, 1-21.

Peterson, L.R., and Peterson, M.J. Mixed paired-associate learning. J. exp Psychol., 1962, 63, 521-527.

Postman, L., and Rau, L. Retention as a function of the method of measurement. Univ. Calif. Publ. Psychol., 1957, 8, 271-396.

Tulving, E. Subjective organization in free recall of "unrelated" words. Psychol. Rev., 1962, 69, 344-354.

Tulving, E. Intratrial and intertrial retention: Notes towards a theory of free recall verbal learning. Psychol. Rev., 1964, 71, 219-237.

Waugh, N.C. and Norman, D.A. Primary memory. Psychol. Rev., 1965, 72, 89-104.

See Also:

STEP: Some Tests of the Decay Theory of Immediate Memory [35089]

STEP: Creating False Memories [35287]

STEP: Primary Memory [35330]

STEP: Associative Encoding and Retrieval [35312]