Abstract
Ninety-six Ss listened to a list of 200 common nouns after receiving instructions to study various portions of the list by repeating each word as it was presented (REP), producing associations to the study items (ASSOC), thinking of the “dictionary meaning” of each word (DM), and visualizing the spelling of each word (VS). One-half of the Ss were tested for forced-choice recognition of the nouns; the other half of the Ss were asked to identify for each study item the particular study strategy that had been used. Contrary to expectations of the frequency theory of recognition memory, recognition errors were significantly fewer under ASSOC or DM instructions than under REP instructions. However, retention of the kind of encoding activity indicates that Ss have available other information than frequency by which to make a recognition decision.
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This article is based on research reported at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago. May 1973.
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Zechmeister, E.B., Gude, C. Instruction effects in recognition memory. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 3, 13–15 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333375
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333375