Associative retrieval processes in free recall

Abstract

I present a new method for analyzing associative processes in free recall. Whileprevious research has emphasized the prominence of semantic organization, the present method illustrates the importance of association by contiguity. This is done by examining conditional response probabilities in the output sequence. For a given item recalled, I examine the probability and latency that it follows an item from a nearby or distant input position. These conditional probabilities and latencies, plotted as a function of the lag between studied items, reveal several regularities about output order in free recall. First, subjects tend to recall items more often and more rapidly from adjacent input positions than from remote input positions. Second, subjects are about twice as likely to recall adjacent pairs in the forward than in the backward direction and are significantly faster in doing so. These effects are observed at all positions in the output sequence. The asymmetry effect is theoretically significant because, in cued recall, nearly symmetric retrieval is found at all serial positions (Kahana, 1995;Murdock, 1962). An attempt is made to fit the search of associative memory model (Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1980 with and without symmetric interitem associations to these data. Other models of free recall are also discussed.The finding that subjects, when told to recall a list of items "in any order," recall categorically or associatively related items in neighboring output positions has provided a foundation for much of the organizational theorizing on human memory. One might even argue that it was these findings which caused a shift from the study of paired associate learning and serial recall in the 1950s and early 1960s to the study of free recall in the mid to late 1960s. Research on serial recall was long concerned with distinguishing theories of positional associations from chained associations (Harcum, 1975), whereas research on free recall focused on interitem similarity and context-to-item associations as the bases for retrieval (Shuell, 1969;Tulving, 1968).What happened to the idea that items studied for free recall are related by virtue of their contiguity? Asch and Ebenholz (1962) found that during free recall only 18% of the total number of sequential responses matched adjacent sequences oflist items in the forward order. They also found no significant difference in the overall number offorward and backward transitions (not necessarily adjacent).' On the basis of these findings, they concluded that "the order in which items were produced in free recall (which registered the course of acquisition) did not correspond notably to the order of earlier experience" (Asch & Ebenholz, 1962, p. 19).

The psychology of intelligence analysis: Drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics.

“…The change in report order is not a modality effect; as we have suggested, it is a strategic shift that reflects subjects' reflection on performance for end-of-list items (although there may be other reasons as well). Figure 9 corroborates the change in report order using a different measure, the conditional response probability (CRP) curve, a measure of the probability of recalling item a immediately followed by item b, conditioned on the recall of b (see Kahana, 1996). The CRP is plotted on the ordinate, with the distance between presented items on the abscissa.…”

“…Early authorities suggested that the change in report documented by the hook does not occur with lists presented visually (e.g., Beaman & Morton, 2000;Kahana, 1996), but they either confounded modality with amount of practice or administered too little practice to allow the hook to develop. In a large experiment, Roberts (1972) compared both visual and auditory presentation (across both list length and rate of presentation), and his data exhibit the hook in both modalities.…”

The Temporal Context Model in Spatial Navigation and Relational Learning: Toward a Common Explanation of Medial Temporal Lobe Function Across Domains.

“…Two components describe episodic association-TCM describes asymmetric associations between stimuli in episodic recall (Howard & Kahana, 1999;Kahana, 1996;Kahana & Caplan, 2002) Because each state of context in a list of non-repeated items is as similar to its predecessor as it is to the states that follow, t A i provides a symmetric retrieval cue that favors nearby list items in both the forward and backward directions (see Eq. 8).…”

“…Both of these properties have been observed in immediate (Howard & Kahana, 1999;Kahana, 1996;Ward et al, 2003), delayed (Howard & Kahana, 1999; and continuous-distractor free recall (Howard & Kahana, 1999), as well as serial recall (Kahana & Caplan, 2002;Raskin & Cook, 1937).…”

“…Indeed, detailed search models based on a short-term memory buffer can describe standard free recall in considerable detail (Kahana, 1996;Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1980, 1981Sirotin, Kimball, & Kahana, submitted). The recency effect in immediate free recall is eliminated by a distractor at the end of the list (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966;Postman & Phillips, 1965), presumably because the distractor removes items from the end of the list from STS.…”