Abstract
College students read 600-word passages and then were tested for recognition of verbatim sentences from the passages in comparison with paraphrased and distractor sentences. Verbatim sentences received higher recognition scores, even after a 20-min delay or with instructions to remember meaning rather than exact wording (Experiments 1 and 2). In a forced-choice test, subjects chose the verbatim sentences over two alternative forms of paraphrases (Experiment 3). Sentences containing more important information in the passages were better recognized, but more false recognition of their paraphrases also occurred.
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This research was supported in part by a grant from the Foundation of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A preliminary version of Experiments 1 and 2 was presented at the 1980 meetings of the American Psychological Association in Montreal.
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Terry, W.S., Mason, H.M. Recognition of sentences from prose. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 19, 7–10 (1982). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330025
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330025