Differential Effects of Repetition on True and False Recognition

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.