The experience of fluency while learning might bias students' metacognitive judgments of learning (JOLs) and impair the efficacy of their study behaviors. In the present experiments, we examined whether perceptual fluency affects JOLs (1) when people only experience one level of fluency, (2) when item relatedness is also available as a cue, and…

Retrieving studied materials often enhances subsequent learning of new materials (Pastötter & Bäuml, 2014). However, retrieval has also been shown to impair new learning (Finn & Roediger, 2013). In this article, we attempted to determine when retrieval enhances and when it impairs new learning. We argue that testing impairs new learning…

The facilitative effect of retrieval practice, or testing, on the probability of later retrieval has been the focus of much recent empirical research. A lesser known benefit of retrieval practice is that it may also enhance the ability of a learner to benefit from a subsequent restudy opportunity. This facilitative effect of retrieval practice on…

Early verbal-memory researchers assumed participants represent memory of a pair of unrelated items with 2 independent, separately modifiable, directional associations. However, memory for pairs of unrelated words (A-B) exhibits associative symmetry: a near-perfect correlation between accuracy on forward (A??) and backward (??B) cued recall. This…

In episodic memory tasks, associations are formed between items presented close together in time. The temporal context model (TCM) hypothesizes that this contiguity effect is a consequence of shared temporal context rather than temporal proximity per se. Using double-function lists of paired associates (e.g., A-B, B-C) presented in a random order,…

A total of 82 Chinese 11- and 12-year-olds with and without dyslexia were tested on four paired associate learning (PAL) tasks, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid naming, and verbal short-term memory in three different experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that children with dyslexia were significantly poorer in visual-verbal…

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low…

Based on the author's Ph. D. dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Previous research has investigated the effects of interpresentation lag within the context of experimenter-controlled lag values. The present study attempted to explore subject-controlled lag effects on paired-associate learning. (Editor)

Three experiments were conducted in which expectations of learning and transfer based on associative theory or frequency theory differed from those based on a theory of mental imagery. (Editor)

Examines the familiar serial to derived paired-associates transfer task in the light of expectations about the amount of positive transfer it should produce. Suggests, contrary to long-standing assumptions, that this paradigm cannot be expected to yield more than relatively moderate degrees of transfer because the utilization of response-produced…

Two procedures were investigated in an attempt to decrease the variability of overlearning response latencies in a study-test paradigm, paired-associate task matching CVC's with response keys: (1) self-pacing the task by presenting test trial stimuli whenever the subject pressed a "home" key; and (2) instructing and shaping subjects to keep home…

Examines the position that the presence of contexts facilitates paired-associate learning through mediation. (Editor/RK)