A well-established phenomenon in the memory literature is the picture superiority effect-the finding that, all else being equal, memory is better for pictures than for words (Paivio & Csapo, 1973). Theorists have attributed pictures' mnemonic advantage to dual coding (Paivio, 1971), conceptual distinctiveness (Hamilton & Geraci, 2006), and physical distinctiveness (Mintzer & Snodgrass, 1999). Here, we present a novel test of the physical-distinctiveness account of picture superiority: If the greater physical variability of pictures relative to words is responsible for their mnemonic benefit, then increasing the distinctiveness of words and/or reducing the physical variability of pictures should reduce or eliminate the picture superiority effect. In the present experiments we increased word distinctiveness by varying font style, font size, color, and capitalization. Additionally, in Experiment 3 we reduced the distinctiveness of pictures by presenting black-and-white pictures with similar orientations. In Experiment 4, a forced choice procedure was used in which subjects were asked to identify the form that each probe had taken during the study phase. The results were consistent with the distinctiveness prediction and, notably, were inconsistent with dual coding.

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The mirror effect is the finding that in recognition tests, a manipulation that increases the hit rate also decreases the false alarm rate. For example, low frequency words have a higher hit rate and a lower false alarm rate than high frequency words. Because the mirror effect is held to be a regularity of memory, it has had a pronounced influence on theories of recognition. We took advantage of the recent increase in the number of linguistic databases to create sets of stimuli that differed on one dimension (contextual diversity, frequency, or concreteness) but were more fully equated on other dimensions known to affect memory. Experiment 1 (contextual diversity), Experiment 3 (frequency), and Experiment 5 (concreteness) found no evidence of a mirror effect. We also conducted parallel experiments which used previously published stimuli that could not avail of the new databases and which therefore contained confounds. Experiment 2 (contextual diversity), Experiment 4 (frequency), and Experiment 6 (concreteness) all resulted in mirror effects. If this pattern of results is replicable, it has broad implications for theories of recognition, which typically view the mirror effect as a benchmark finding. Unfortunately, few articles on the mirror effect include the stimuli, rendering the past literature of little use in testing this hypothesis. We encourage researchers to create and assess other pools of highly controlled stimuli to establish whether the stimulus-based mirror effect obtains when confounds are eliminated or whether it is due to the presence of these confounds.

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Shiffrin and Steyvers (1997) introduced a model of recognition memory called retrieving effectively from memory (REM) and successfully applied it to a number of basic memory phenomena. REM incorporates differentiation, wherein item repetitions are accumulated in a single mnemonic trace rather than separate traces. This allows REM to account for several benchmark findings, including the null list-strength effect in recognition . The original REM treated massed and spaced repetitions identically, which prevents it from predicting a mnemonic advantage for spaced over massed repetitions (i.e., the spacing effect). However, Shiffrin and Steyvers discussed the possibility that repetitions might be represented in a single trace only if the subject identifies that the repeated item was previously studied. It is quite plausible that subjects would notice repetitions more for massed than for spaced items. Here we show that incorporating this idea allows REM to predict three important findings in the recognition memory literature: (1) the spacing effect, (2) the finding of slightly positive list-strength effects with spaced repetitions, as opposed to massed repetitions or increased study time, and (3) liststrength effects that have been observed using very large strong-to-weak ratios (see Norman, 2002).

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An ongoing debate in the memory literature concerns whether the list-length effect (better memory for short lists compared with long lists) exists in item recognition (Annis, Lenes, Westfall, Criss, & Malmberg, 2015; Dennis, Lee, & Kinnell, 2008). This debate was initiated when Dennis and Humphreys (2001) showed that, when confounds present in earlier list-length experiments were controlled, the list-length effect disappeared. The issue has yet to be settled. Interestingly, the same confounds present in recognition experiments exist in cued-recall experiments. Here, we implemented Dennis and Humphreys’ (2001) methodological controls to test for the list-length effect in cued recall. In Experiment 1, we found a robust list-length effect when start-of-study items from the long list were tested. However, no list-length effect was found in Experiments 2 and 3 when end-of-study items from the long list were tested. These results are consistent with the view that cued recall is susceptible to retroactive interference but not proactive interference, a position supported by early interference work (e.g., Lindauer, 1968; Melton & von Lackum, 1941).

In recognition, context effects often manifest as higher hit and false-alarm rates to probes tested in an old context compared with probes tested in a new context; sometimes, this concordant effect is accompanied by a discrimination advantage. According to the cue-overload account of context effects (Rutherford, 2004), context acts like any other cue, and thus context effects should be larger with lighter context loads. Conversely, the Item, Associated Context, and Ensemble (ICE) account (Murnane et al., 1999) attributes context effects to two factors: subjects erroneously attributing context familiarity to the probe, and the formation of ensembles (mnemonic combinations of item and context). Context familiarity increases as exposure at study increases, and thus ICE predicts larger effects of context as context load increases. Relatedly, ICE predicts larger effects of context as context meaningfulness increases, as meaningful contexts are more likely to be bound to the target in an ensemble. In Experiments 1 and 2, rather than manipulate context load during the study phase, we relied on subjects' preexperimental context exposure to manipulate context load. Subjects studied words superimposed on photographs of their university campus or another university campus. At test, targets and distractors were evenly divided between study and novel contexts and between familiar and unfamiliar contexts. In Experiment 3, we manipulated context familiarity within the experimental session. Results supported ICE, suggesting that context does not act as a retrieval cue in recognition.