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OBJECTIVE To examine the influence of competing voices or noise on the comprehension of spoken narratives for young adults. DESIGN First, an intelligibility assessment of the target narratives was conducted to establish a signal-to-noise ratio ensuring accurate initial speech recognition. Then, narrative comprehension for two target types (fixed and varied target talker) was measured in four listening conditions (quiet, one-talker speech, speech babble, speech-shaped noise). After hearing target narratives in each listening condition, participants completed a visual recognition memory task that assessed the comprehension of the narrative materials at three levels of representation (surface form, propositional, event model). STUDY SAMPLE Seventy adults (18-32 years of age). RESULTS Narrative comprehension results revealed a main effect of listening condition at the event model level, indicating poorer narrative memory of described situations for all noise conditions compared to quiet. Increased positive responses to thematically consistent but situationally "wrong" memory probes drove this effect. No other significant effects were observed. CONCLUSION Despite near-perfect speech recognition, background noise negatively influenced aspects of spoken narrative comprehension and memory. Specifically, noise did not disrupt memory for what was said (surface form and propositional memory), but only memory for what was talked about (event model memory).

Contains fulltext : 214941.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository. 3 p.

Author(s): Aczel, Balazs; Szaszi, Barnabas; Sarafoglou, Alexandra; Kekecs, Zoltan; Kucharský, Simon; Benjamin, Daniel; Chambers, Christopher D; Fisher, Agneta; Gelman, Andrew; Gernsbacher, Morton A; Ioannidis, John P; Johnson, Eric; Jonas, Kai; Kousta, Stavroula; Lilienfeld, Scott O; Lindsay, D Stephen; Morey, Candice C; Munafo, Marcus; Newell, Benjamin R; Pashler, Harold; Shanks, David R; Simons, Daniel J; Wicherts, Jelte M; Albarracin, Dolores; Anderson, Nicole D; Antonakis, John; Arkes, Hal R; Back, Mitja D; Banks, George C; Beevers, Christopher; Bennett, Andrew A; Bleidorn, Wiebke; Boyer, Ty W; Cacciari, Cristina; Carter, Alice S; Cesario, Joseph; Clifton, Charles; Conroy, Ronan M; Cortese, Mike; Cosci, Fiammetta; Cowan, Nelson; Crawford, Jarret; Crone, Eveline A; Curtin, John; Engle, Randall; Farrell, Simon; Fearon, Pasco; Fichman, Mark; Frankenhuis, Willem; Freund, Alexandra M; Gaskell, M Gareth; Giner-Sorolla, Roger; Green, Don P; Greene, Robert L; Harlow, Lisa L; de la Guardia, Fernando Hoces; Isaacowitz, Derek; Kolodner, Janet; Lieberman, Debra; Logan, Gordon D; Mendes, Wendy B; Moersdorf, Lea; Nyhan, Brendan; Pollack, Jeffrey; Sullivan, Christopher; Vazire, Simine; Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan | Abstract: An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Previous research has demonstrated a retrospective memory bias in metacognitive judgments regarding performance on general knowledge questions: Test-takers rate their own performance more optimistically when tests begin with easy questions than when tests begin with hard questions. An anchoring heuristic has been proposed to explain this finding, in which experience with the early questions constrains global performance evaluations of the test. In the current study we report on two experiments using tasks of item recognition and associative recognition to investigate the generality of question order bias. As predicted by an anchoring explanation, participants' estimates of performance were higher for item recognition tests beginning with easy items. However, the effect was reversed in the associative recognition task: Participants' estimates of performance were higher for tests beginning with hard items. Specific recollections, if present, may have a greater impact on test performance perception than more general global impressions.

Long-term memory retention has long been seen as primarily or exclusively being driven by the meaning of stimuli. Three memory paradigms are reviewed that demonstrate the importance of stimulus structure in memory. First, memory is influenced by orthographic distinctiveness. Stimuli that have unusual spelling patterns are more likely to be processed as individual stimuli than are items that are less distinct. This may either enhance or degrade memory performance, depending upon the nature of the test that is given. Second, the phenomenon of recognition without identification shows that orthographic features can be effectively used as retrieval cues even when the attempted retrieval of a stimulus' name and meaning ends in failure, preventing use of semantic cues. Third, the pseudoword effect, the higher rate of positive responses to pronounceable nonwords than to words, is a demonstration that adding meaning to orthographic features may lead to a reduction of familiarity. Structural features can play an important role in long-term retention.

Three experiments on the role of orthographic distinctiveness (as measured by neighborhood size [N]) in associative recognition are reported. A mirror effect was obtained, with high-N words receiving more hits and fewer false alarms than low-N words. This pattern was replicated in Experiment 2, where participants carried out a relational orienting task. However, the high-N advantage in hit rates was eliminated in Experiment 3 when subjects carried out an item-processing orienting task. The high-N advantage in associative recognition contrasts with the low-N advantage found in item recognition. This reversal of mirror effects between item and associative recognition is empirically similar to patterns found in studies of normative word frequency.

This study argues for the importance of physical word features in recognition memory by investigating the influence of orthographic distinctiveness. Experiment 1 demonstrated a mirror effect in ayes/no recognition test by manipulating orthographic neighborhood size. Words with small neighborhoods showed more hits and fewer false alarms than did words with larger neighborhoods. Experiment 2 replicated the neighborhood size mirror effect using null pairs in a forced choice recognition test. Experiment 3 required remember/know judgments in a yes/no recognition task. Experiment 4 used the same yes/no test as did Experiment 1, adding a study task that drew attention away from orthographic information in the study list. The mirror pattern disappeared with the addition of the study task.

Previous work has shown that when items in a perceptual identification task are presented too quickly to identify, participants can still discriminate between studied and unstudied items. Such recognition without perceptual identification (RWPI) has been shown to occur in a variety of situations, including the false recognition of semantic associates of studied items. The present study investigated the utility of the RWPI paradigm for isolating instances of recognition that are familiarity based from those that are recollection based. Toward this end, the magnitude of the RWPI effect was compared in item versus associative recognition and in short versus long lists. The RWPI effect was larger in item than in associative recognition, and larger with short than with long study lists. These results are interpreted within the context of a dual-process approach to recognition and support the notion that RWPI taps familiarity-based recognition.

Participants are more likely to give positive responses on a recognition test to pseudowords (pronounceable nonwords) than words. A series of experiments suggests that this difference reflects the greater overall familiarity of pseudowords than of words. Pseudowords receive higher ratings of similarity to a studied list than do words. Pseudowords receive more positive recognition responses than words even when pseudowords are remembered at least as well as words. This pseudoword effect is found on forced-choice recognition and on frequency judgments but not in associative recognition.

Two experiments are reported in which, after attempting to identify a briefly flashed, masked test word, participants were asked to rate the likelihood that it had been presented in an earlier study list. Even when people were unable to identify such items, they demonstrated an ability to discriminate between those that were studied and those that were not studied; ratings given to studied items were significantly higher than ratings given to nonstudied items. This effect does not appear to be a data-driven phenomenon. In Experiment 1 it was found when the presentation modality was changed from study to test. In Experiment 2 false memory for unidentified items that were related to studied items was shown.

Two experiments are reported in which the effects of presentation modality on false memory in recall and recognition are studied. False recall and recognition of critical targets are lower for non-presented items related to a study list when that study list is presented visually than when presented auditorily. This pattern of low levels of false memory for critical targets holds even when participants read the visually presented study items aloud. These results suggest that recollection of visual detail plays a role in the prevention of false memory. However, both the hit rates (true memory) and the false-alarm rates to weakly related distractors (non-critical targets) were higher for visual presentation than for auditory presentation, suggesting that more than one mechanism may underlie false recognition.

Four experiments are reported on the importance of retrospective judgments of performance (postdictions) on tests. Participants answered general knowledge questions and estimated how many questions they answered correctly. They gave higher postdictions when easy questions preceded difficult questions. This was true when time to answer each question was equalized and constrained, when participants were instructed not to write answers, and when questions were presented in a multiple-choice format. Results are consistent with the notion that first impressions predominate in overall perception of test difficulty.

The effects of similarity on associative recognition are studied. Participants are more likely to give positive responses in associative recognition when a test pair consists of related words (synonyms, antonyms, or members of the same taxonomic category) than when it consists of unrelated words. This effect is greater on distractors than on targets, thereby leading to a negative effect of within-pair similarity on accuracy. This finding is inconsistent with the conclusion based on previous paired-associate and cued-recall studies that similarity enhances associative memory and may reflect the fact that related pairs are higher-frequency units than are unrelated pairs. A similarity decrement was also found on a test where participants had to remember the order of items in a pair. However, a test on item recognition, in which items were studied individually but tested a pair at a time, led to fewer positive responses to related pairs than to unrelated pairs.

Some studies have shown that, although repetition increases the familiarity of a stimulus, it does not improve memory for its details. Because memory for associative information is thought to require memory for the details of study presentation, the effects of repetition on associative recognition were examined in the present study. The pattern of results was similar to that found for the recognition of item details: Repetition increased the familiarity of the individual items within each pair to a greater extent than it improved memory for their specific pairings.

Many studies of recognition memory have shown that repeating a word on a study list increases true recognition (i.e., the hit rate) of that word. Less clear is the extent to which repeating a word on the study list increases false alarms to a semantically related distractor. Five experiments examined the effect of repetition on true and false recognition. In the first two experiments, false recognition of a distractor was only found when five distinct words related to it appeared on the list. In Experiments 3 and 4, presenting a list word either 5 or 10 times failed to increase false recognition of a related distractor, relative to when the list word occurred once. Experiment 5 revealed that when five words related to a distractor were blocked together in the study list, repeating them caused a significant decrease in false recognition of the distractor. Repetition appears to be one variable that differentially affects true and false recognition.

Seven experiments are reported on memory for order of stimuli either generated by the subject or presented to the subject. When subjects were required to assign items to precise positions, a generation decrement was obtained, with subjects showing worse memory for order when they had generated the items. However, no generation decrement in accuracy was obtained when subjects were asked for relative recency judgments. This suggests that judgments of absolute and relative position are made using somewhat different memory processes.

False recognition of nonpresented words that were strong associates of 12 words in a study list was examined. Six lists were read to subjects; each list contained the 12 strongest associates to a critical nonpresented word. False-alarm rates to the 6 critical nonpresented words were obtained under several different conditions. The manipulations included varying the level of processing done to the study lists, varying the recognition-test procedure, repeating each of the study lists three times, and mixing the words from the six study lists together. A reliable false-recognition effect for critical nonpresented words was obtained in all conditions. However, the effect was not impervious to all of the manipulations. Significantly lower false recognition was obtained when learning was incidental as well as when the words on the six lists were mixed together. Neither level of processing nor repetition significantly influenced false recognition. This last result is inconsistent with Hintzman’s (1988) MINERVA 2 global memory model, but agrees with predictions from Shiffrin, Ratcliff, and Clark’s (1990) SAM model.

Previous research has shown that stimuli that are masked during encoding are remembered better than stimuli that are unmasked (Nairne, 1988). Four experiments were conducted that demonstrate several limitations to this effect. A recognition advantage for masked items over unmasked items was not found when the stimuli were unfamiliar low-frequency words and nonwords. A recognition advantage was also not found when the encoding task discouraged a cursory reading of the unmasked items and when masking was manipulated as a between-subjects variable. These boundary conditions resemble ones found in previous studies of the generation effect.

Two experiments are reported that studied the effects of vocalisation on situational frequency judgment. Subjects saw lists of words and were later asked to judge frequency of occurrence on the list. In Experiment 1, the word list was learned incidentally, and frequency estimates were higher for words that subjects had read aloud during study than for those that had been read silently. In Experiment 2, an intentional-learning procedure was used; higher estimates for words read aloud than for those read silently were found when pronunciation was manipulated within subjects but not when it was manipulated between subjects. In all cases, pronunciation had no effect on estimates for words that had only been presented once on the study list. These results suggest that multiple processes may underlie frequency estimation.

Classes of stimuli that are relatively easy to classify in recognition as old when old also appear to be relatively easy to classify as new when new. Five experiments are reported that extend this mirror effect to tests requiring retention of order and associative information. These experiments tested memory for words and nonwords; across experiments, the mirror effect was found on both yes--no and forced-choice tests. In addition, a new account of the mirror effect is proposed, one which suggests that this pattern results from participants' attempts to distribute responses equally across stimulus classes on tests. Support from this account came from additional experiments in which the mirror effect was eliminated when participants were asked to refrain from using positive responses as guesses. Numerous studies have been performed in which recognition memory has been tested for study lists containing two distinct sets of stimuli. The typical finding is that if one class is easier to classify as old when old than the other, then that class will also be easier to classify as new when new. On a yes-no recognition test, this pattern is shown when the stimulus class that has the higher hit rate also has a lower false-alarm rate than the other class. On a forced-choice recognition test, the equivalent pattern would be shown when participants are most accurate on test pairs containing a target and a distractor from the same class, least accurate on test pairs containing a target and a distractor from the other class, and intermediate in accuracy on the pairs containing one stimulus each from the two classes. Results such as these have been called the mirror effect and have been found in many recognition studies, such as comparisons of words with nonwords and low-frequency words with high-frequency words (Glanzer & Adams, 1985, 1990). The generality of the mirror effect across stimuli in recognition has been clearly demonstrated. The purpose of Experiments 1-5 was to demonstrate its generality across memory tests. It has been shown that the mirror effect can be found in frequency discrimination (Greene & Thapar, 1994). Frequency discrimination, like recognition, is a test of item information, and evidence suggests that frequency judgments and recognition are performed using similar processes (Hintzman & Curran, 1994). The first five experiments reported here extend the mirror effect to measures of order and associative information. All current accounts of the mirror effect have been intended to explain its occurrence on recognition tests. If frequency discrimination is performed using the same processes as recognition, such theories may be able to be extended

A word fragment is less likely to be completed if it is presented incrementally (R______P,R____R_P, R_I__R_P, R_I__ROP) than if it is presented all at once (e.g., R_I__ROP). This phenomenon is known as the cue-depreciation effect. The present study examined the role of strategies in this phenomenon. The magnitude of the cue-depreciation effect was increased when subjects were asked to adopt a passive generation approach to word fragment completion. The current study investigated an extension of Bruner and Potter's (1964) early hypothesis-generation account of the cue-depreciation effect. Findings demonstrated the influence of completion strat-egies for a general theory of fragment completion. Peynircioglu and Watkins (1986) reported a difference between the number of items correctly identified with two methods of cuing targets on a word-fragment completion test. In the first condition, the standard cuing condition, subjects were shown a five-letter fragment (e.g. R_I__ROP) that uniquely specified an eight-letter word (in this case, RAINDROP). In the second condition, the incremental condition, subjects were first shown a two-letter cue (e.g. R______P), then a three-letter cue ( R____R_P), then a four-letter cue ( R_I__R_P ), and finally the five-letter cue (R_I__ROP). Although subjects had more time to solve each of the words cued with the incremental fragments as compared to the standard condition (16 s vs. 4 s), completion performance was significantly lower in the incremental condition than in the standard condition. This phenomenon is referred to as the cue-depreciation effect and seems important to understand for several reasons. First, the cue-depreciation effect appears counterintuitive, in that subjects in the incremental-cuing condition have much more time to identify each target word than subjects in the standard-cuing condition; it is rare to find situations where increased solution time is associated with a decrease in the probability of finding a solution. Second, the fragment completion task has recently become one of the most widely studied memory procedures. However, it is still poorly understood, and its underlying processes have been the focus of much empirical and theoretical controversy (e.g., Challis & Brodbeck,1992; Hirshman, Snodgrass, Mindes, & Freenan, 1990; Roediger & Challis, 1992; Weldon, 1991). Because different versions of the word-fragment completion task are often used to study the influence of experimental manipulations (levels of processing, repetition, etc.) on priming, it is important to understand the relation between the nature of the fragment cues and overall performance in the fragment completion task. The cue-depreciation effect reported by Peynircioglu and Watkins (1986) resembles the findings from an earlier study by Bruner and Potter (1964).Bruner and Potter had subjects identify pictures of common objects that were initially blurred and then gradually brought into focus. These authors found that correct recognition of the pictures was negatively related to the initial level of blurriness, i.e., the longer the exposure and the worse the display, the less likely was identification at the test focus level. Bruner and Potter's explanation for their findings was that subjects made early hypotheses about the identity of the picture despite the blur. These original interpretations remained even when stimulus input began to contradict them and thus interfered with the discovery of the correct response. Peynircioglu and Watkins dismissed an extension of Bruner and Potter's early hypothesis-gene-ration account as an explanation for the cue-depreciation effect because the cue-depreciation effect was found only on primed items. However, in light of the subsequent findings that the cue-depreciation effect can be found on unprimed items (Peynircioglu, 1987, 1990; Thapar, 1992), the early hypothesis-generation account again seems viable. …

Previous research has shown mixed results regarding the effects of encoding variability on memory for frequency. A series of experiments is reported here using a frequency-discrimination task. In all of the experiments, when repetitions were massed on the list, frequency discrimination was improved when repeated items were studied in a different encoding context at each presentation. In contrast, when repetitions were spaced, frequency discrimination tended to improve when repeated items were studied in identical contexts at each of their presentations. However, this latter trend was weak and was not found when the items had been learned incidentally.

Orthographic distinctiveness (as measured by neighbourhood size) may have complex effects on memory. Previous research has shown that words with small orthographic neighbourhoods show an advantage in item recognition, while words with large neighbourhoods show an advantage in associative recognition. The effects of neighbourhood size on immediate memory for order may be similarly complex. Immediate item position reconstruction of six-word lists drawn from a large stimulus pool shows an advantage for small-neighbourhood words. However, when memory for order is tested through immediate serial recall, the reverse is found, with large-neighbourhood words showing an advantage.

When subjects perform a distractor task before and after every item on a list, recall of the last item is much higher than recall of items from the middle of the list. Koppenaal and Glanzer (1990) have shown that this long-term recency effect can be eliminated by using, after the last item, a distractor task different from that used elsewhere on the list. They interpreted this finding as evidence in favor of a short-term-store account of long-term recency effects. This account is challenged by the results reported here. Practice either on the task or on time-sharing between the task and list items had little impact on the recency effect. Also, substantial recency effects were found when a different distractor task occurred after every list position. Thus, it is not true that long-term recency effects are found only when subjects have an opportunity to adapt to the distractor task. Our results are not consistent with a short-term-store account of recency effects.

The spacing effect refers to the advantage in memory for information repeated at separate points of time over information repeated in massed fashion. Three experiments showed that no spacing effect was found in free recall of lists containing items of high interstimulus semantic similarity. However, spacing effects were found when recognition or frequency-discrimination tests were given on these materials. The results support the hypothesis that several distinct processes underlie the spacing effect. Repeated information i s generally remembered better when i t i s presented a t widely spaced times than when presented in massed fashion. This spacing effect is one of the most widespread of memory phenomena, occurring on many different kinds of tests (e.g., free recall, recognition, word completion, perceptual identification), with many dif- ferent kinds of materials (e.g., words, pictures, prose), and using many different subject populations (e.g., preschool children, young adults, older people). Numerous theories have been developed to explain the spacing effect (for re- views, see Crowder, 1976; Greene, 1989; Hintzman, 1974

Substantial recency effects are found in immediate serial recall of auditory items. These recency effects are greatly reduced when an irrelevant auditory stimulus (a stimulus suffix) is presented. A number of accounts that have been proposed to explain these phenomena assume that auditory items are susceptible to masking or overwriting in memory. Later items overwrite earlier items, leading to an advantage for the last item, unless it is masked by a suffix. This assumption is called into question by evidence that presenting list items in two voices has no beneficial effect in immediate serial recall. In addition, it is shown that suffix effects on both terminal and preterminal list items are influenced by the physical similarity of the suffix to the terminal item and not by the physical similarity of the suffix to preterminal items.