One step is not enough: Making better use of association norms to predict cued recall

Cued recall is strongly affected by the strength of the preexisting connection between the test cue and the information to be recalled, the target. In all past work, preexisting cue-to-target strength has been measured by the probability that the cue produced the target in free association. This paper presents four experiments showing that this use of such norms underestimates the strength of the connection and that a more accurate estimate can be obtained by incorporating indirect as well as direct connections in the estimate. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that in extralist cued recall both the strength and number of two-step indirect connections facilitate recall. Experiment 3 showed that three-step connections have negligible effects. Experiment 4 used an intralist task in which cue and target are first studied together, and the results showed once again that indirect connections can affect recall. In all of these experiments, indirect connections had an effect on recall that was larger when direct cue-to-target strength was weak than when it was strong. Implications for using association norms in research are described, and an algorithm for using association norms to measure cueto-target strength is proposed.

[1]  R. Ratcliff,et al.  Spreading activation versus compound cue accounts of priming: mediated priming revisited. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[2]  R. Ratcliff,et al.  A retrieval theory of priming in memory. , 1988, Psychological review.

[3]  J. Cañas,et al.  Associative Strength Effects in the Lexical Decision Task , 1990, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[4]  Dale T. Miller,et al.  Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives , 1986 .

[5]  C. McEvoy.  Automatic and strategic processes in picture naming. , 1988 .

[6]  Timothy P. McNamara,et al.  Theories of priming: I. Associative distance and lag. , 1992 .

[7]  J. Jenkins.  Mediated Associations: Paradigms and Situations. , 1963 .

[8]  J. Deese.  The structure of associations in language and thought , 1966 .

[9]  D L Nelson,et al.  Implicit memory: effects of network size and interconnectivity on cued recall. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[10]  T. O. Nelson,et al.  Response latency and response accuracy as measures of memory , 1984 .

[11]  Thomas A. Schreiber,et al.  Word concreteness and word structure as independent determinants of recall , 1992 .

[12]  H. P. Bahrick.  Two-phase model for prompted recall. , 1970 .

[13]  Douglas L. Nelson,et al.  Interpreting the influence of implicitly activated memories on recall and recognition. , 1998 .

[14]  Patrick T. W. Hudson,et al.  Associative facilitation of word recognition as measured from a neutral prime , 1982, Memory & cognition.

[15]  H. Kucera,et al.  Computational analysis of present-day American English , 1967 .

[16]  Thomas A. Schreiber,et al.  Processing implicit and explicit representations. , 1992, Psychological review.

[17]  Douglas L. Nelson,et al.  Encoding context and set size. , 1979 .

[18]  Convergent association: Additional evidence , 1968 .

[19]  D L Nelson,et al.  Effects of implicit memory on explicit recall: Set size and word-frequency effects , 1995, Psychological research.

[20]  Douglas L. Nelson,et al.  Category Name and Instance Norms for 106 Categories of Various Sizes , 1982 .

[21]  R. Shiffrin,et al.  A retrieval model for both recognition and recall. , 1984, Psychological review.