Distinctiveness and serial position effects in recognition

Digitized photographs of snowflakes were presented for a recognition test after retention intervals of varying durations. While overall accuracy and discrimination remained constant, as the retention interval increased, primacy increased from chance to reliably better than chance while recency decreased to chance levels. A variation of Murdock’s (1960) distinctiveness model accounted for the changing primacy and recency effects observed in both between- and within-subjects designs. The generality of the model was examined in two different paradigms: lexical access during sentence processing, and free recall in the continual distractor paradigm. In both cases, the model made accurate qualitative predictions for both latency and accuracy measures.

[1]  W. Burnham.  Memory, Historically and Experimentally Considered. I. An Historical Sketch of the Older Conceptions of Memory , 1888 .

[2]  W. H. Burnham.  Memory, Historically and Experimentally Considered , 1889 .

[3]  H. V. Restorff.  Über die Wirkung von Bereichsbildungen im Spurenfeld , 1933 .

[4]  K. Koffka.  Principles Of Gestalt Psychology , 1936 .

[5]  B. Murdock,et al.  The distinctiveness of stimuli. , 1960, Psychological review.

[6]  W. J. Humphreys.  Snow Crystals , 1962 .

[7]  H. Helson,et al.  Adaptation-level theory , 1964 .

[8]  Donald A. Norman,et al.  A non-parametric analysis of recognition experiments , 1964 .

[9]  M. Potter,et al.  Recognition memory for a rapid sequence of pictures. , 1969, Journal of experimental psychology.

[10]  F. Craik.  The fate of primary memory items in free recall , 1970 .

[11]  S. Madigan,et al.  Perfect recall and total forgetting: A problem for models of short-term memory , 1971 .

[12]  A. G. Goldstein,et al.  Visual recognition memory for complex configurations , 1971 .

[13]  Joan Gay Snodgrass,et al.  Recognition memory for words, pictures, and words + pictures , 1972 .

[14]  B. Murdock.  Human memory: Theory and data. , 1975 .

[15]  R. G. Crowder.  Principles of learning and memory , 1977 .

[16]  E. H. Cornell,et al.  Serial-position effects in infants’ recognition memory , 1983, Memory & cognition.

[17]  B. Murdock.  An analysis of the strength-latency relationship , 1985, Memory & cognition.

[18]  R. Cook,et al.  Memory processing of serial lists by pigeons, monkeys, and people. , 1985, Science.

[19]  A. Glenberg,et al.  A temporal distinctiveness theory of recency and modality effects. , 1986, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[20]  Robert L. Greene,et al.  Sources of recency effects in free recall. , 1986 .

[21]  M. McDaniel,et al.  Bizarre imagery as an effective memory aid: The importance of distinctiveness. , 1986 .

[22]  J. Hampton,et al.  Item-Specific Processing and the Generation Effect: Support for a Distinctiveness Account , 1988 .

[23]  M. Beeman,et al.  Building and Accessing Clausal Representations: The Advantage of First Mention versus the Advantage of Clause Recency. , 1989, Journal of memory and language.

[24]  R. G. Crowder,et al.  Schedules of presentation and temporal distinctiveness in human memory. , 1990 .

[25]  D. L. Hintzman.  Why are Formal Models Useful in Psychology , 1990 .

[26]  R. G. Crowder,et al.  The microscope metaphor in human memory. , 1991 .

[27]  G. J. Johnson.  A distinctiveness model of serial learning , 1991 .

[28]  S. R. Schmidt,et al.  Can we have a distinctive theory of memory? , 1991, Memory & cognition.

[29]  W. Donaldson.  Measuring recognition memory. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[30]  I. Neath.  Contextual and distinctive processes and the serial position function. , 1993 .