The orthographic distinctiveness effect on direct and indirect tests of memory: delineating the awareness and processing requirements

Abstract We examined the processing and awareness requirements that mediate superior memory for distinct items in long-term memory by studying the effects of orthographic distinctiveness. Orthographically distinct words are remembered better than common words on the direct test of free recall but not on the indirect test of perceptual identification. These results suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect requires test awareness. But interestingly, this distinctiveness effect has also been reported in one indirect test, that of word fragment completion ( Hunt & Toth, 1990 ). We examined the locus of the orthographic distinctiveness effect in the indirect test of word fragment completion and the direct tests of word fragment cued recall and free recall and assessed the role of awareness (Experiment 1) and conceptual processes (Experiments 2a–2c) in mediating this effect. Our results support the proposal that the distinctiveness effect depends on direct reference to the study context and further specify that this effect is mediated, to a large extent, by comparative processes even when distinctiveness emerges from surface-level differences.

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