Computer control of memory experiments on a large-scale timesharing system

Friendly, Michael; Franklin, Pat

doi:10.3758/bf03205650

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…All of the experiments were run under computer control using a standard CRT display terminal linked to an interactive mainframe (IBM/370 or OEC-IO). The computer program used in this research was derived from a general software system developed for running memory experiments (Friendly & Franklin, 1979 system was designed to be completely driven by data and tables in external files. These files contained the words and experimental parameters, including se!ection parameters for the items, presentation rate, numbers of words, and number of trials.…”

Section: Multiple-trial Free Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns

1986

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To investigate the properties that make a word easy to recall, we added to existing norms for 925 nouns measures of availability, goodness, emotionality, pronunciability, and probability of recall in multiple-trial free recall. Availability, imagery, and emotionality were found to be the best predictors of which words were recalled. This result, which is stable across recall data collected in three separate laboratories, argues for the importance of availability as apredictor of recall and questions the role of the correlated variables of word frequency and meaningfulness. Consistent with earlier work on a smaller sample of words, six factors describe the numerous properties of words studied by psychologists. The six factors are composed of variables based on orthography, imagery and meaning, word frequency, recall, emotionality, and goodness.What factors determine whether a particular word will be recalled by a particular subject under a specific set of experimental conditions? Over the history of the study of memory and learning, four separate aspects of the recall task have received attention (Jenkins, 1979): (1) the nature of the material to be learned and the conditions of presentation; (2) the type of response or criterion task used; (3) the activities engaged in by the learner during study and at test, including depth of processing, rehearsal, and mnemonic strategies; and (4) the characteristics of the learner, including general knowledge, skills, and motivation.In the study presented here, we addressed the first aspect of recall tasks, the nature of materials and the conditions of presentation, by trying to predict the probability of recall of individual words when the other three aspects of the recall task were randomized or held constant. Most of our emphasis was on the material itself because here, and in other studies (Rubin, 1980(Rubin, , 1985, presentation effects were minimal.Consider a typical study investigating one or more item variables, such as frequency, concreteness, or age of acquisition. Words are selected to represent different portions of the range of the variables of interest (e. g., high frequency vs. low frequency). The recall performance of subjects learning these words is then compared. For our purposes, this form of experiment has four disadvantages. First, in selecting fixed lists of stimulus items, the researcher must deal with the confounding relationships between the variable(s) under study and other correlated variables. Holding the correlated stimulus variables constant eliminates the confound, but may produce lists of items which are not representative of the variable being studied, or which are confounded in new ways. For example, Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) noted that varying imagery while holding concreteness constant results in a set of words that varies in emotionality. Second, so many properties of the experimental procedure (e.g., presentation time, modality, etc.) and the subject population are held constant that the generality of the results may be questio...

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Section: Multiple-trial Free Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns

1986

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“…The sort-recall task was conducted using a Datamedia video display terminal operating from an IBM 370 computer. The programming was from an APL software system developed for memory experiments (Friendly & Franklin, 1979). For the item recognition task, the equipment described in Experiment 1 was used.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retrieval of information from subjectively organized lists.

Franklin¹,

Okada²,

Burrows³

et al. 1980

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory

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In two experiments, subjects learned subspan and supraspan lists by sorting list items into subsets. An item recognition task followed, and reaction time was found to be a bilinear function of memory list length. The slope for supraspan lists was more shallow than the slope for subspan lists. The reaction time data for supraspan lists was replotted as a function of the number of subsets formed during the sorting task. Reaction time increased linearly with the number of subsets but was independent of the number of items within a tested subset. These results suggest that processing of information is serial between, but not within, organized subgroups.

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“…The entire experimental session was run under computer control using a CRT display terminal (Datamedia 1520A) linked to an IBM/370 computer by a 30-cps communication line. The computer system used in this research was derived from a general software system developed for running memory experiments (Friendly & Franklin, 1979). The system consists of a control program for running the experiment and computer mes containing word pools and experimental parameters required by the program (e.g., selection parameters for the word pool, presentation rate, numbers of words, and trials).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive presentation in multitrial free recall

Friendly

Franklin

1980

Memory & Cognition

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This paper explores whether free recall performance and organization can be facilitated using computer-controlled interactive presentation, where stimulus presentation on Trial N+1 depends on the individual subject's prior recall history. A series of experiments investigated the effects of two types of response-contingent presentation order manipulations and of selective tagging manipulation designed to highlight the presentation of previously nonrecalled items. An initial experiment using 20-word lists showed no differences among groups, due to a ceiling effect. Two subsequent experiments, using longer lists (30 and 40 words), found that recall and subjective organization were increased by selective tagging and by presentation orders that preserved the subject's prior order of recall. The results demonstrate that subjects' previous recall histories contain information that can be used to facilitate recall. The potential of other interactive manipulations is discussed. This paper describes a series of initial experiments using an interactive free recall procedure to study memory organization and the retrieval of information from memory. In standard multitrial free recall (SFR), the learner is presented a list of items to memorize, usually in random order, one item at a time. The learner then attempts to recall as many items as possible, in any convenient order. Interactive free recall (IFR) differs from this description principally in that what is pre-

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Computer control of memory experiments on a large-scale timesharing system

Cited by 7 publications

References 23 publications

Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns

Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns

Retrieval of information from subjectively organized lists.

Interactive presentation in multitrial free recall

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