The aim of this study was to explore the effects of the following memory encoding variables on human learning: depth (implying progression through levels of encoding); spread (elaboration of information at a given level) and; congruence (integration of the form of encoding and the material to be learned). Encoding refers to the way in which…

It sometimes happens that one is unable to recall a word or name that he feels he knows very well. This state of frustrated recall is referred to as a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience. Two experiments were devised to compare the ability of a weak trace and a decoding-failure model to predict the conditions under which TOT reports would be most…

People sometimes forget a name or a word, and are plagued by the feeling that the sought-for word is somewhere in memory but not immediately available. The frequent description of this tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon as subthreshold memory traces is challenged by data showing that TOT genesis and TOT recovery are distinct processes. In a verbal…

To detect the underlying structural relationship or chain among certain memorized pairs, two groups of undergraduates verbally reordered previously memorized pairs of either concrete or abstract nouns. The superior performance of the concrete word subjects was attributed to the differential effect of imaginal versus verbal encoding. (Author/CP)

Six experiments were intended to characterize more completely a phenomenon found when lists were first learned in isolation and then placed together for simultaneous learning. The subjects learned three lists, each list clearly distinguishable from the other. One of the lists was recalled, another was tested for frequency information, and the…

Contextual facilitation appears to depend upon the mode of analysis of the prime. If the prime is analyzed as a meaningful unit, facilitation occurs. However, if it is subjected to a more discrete, letter-by-letter analysis, the priming effect vanishes. (Author/CP)

An earlier study showed that responses are remembered better when subjects produce them from cues, than when subjects read cue-response pairs. The decided memory advantage for generated targets relative to read ones is known as the generation effect. The present research is designed to study the generation effect for cues, following a…

Highly skilled and less skilled readers read words and numbers aloud as rapidly as possible. Less skilled readers were slower and less accurate on both tasks showing that the need to encode and process order information may be related to reading disabilities. This hypothesis was tested by using paired-associate learning. (Author/RD)

Examined sex differences in eighth and tenth graders' and college students' use of elaboration in paired associate learning. Findings indicate that, as males and females became more proficient strategy users, sex differences diminished under more favorable task conditions that encouraged strategy use but remained constant under less favorable…