How do recall requirements affect decision-making in free recall initiation? A linear ballistic accumulator approach

Abstract

Models of free recall describe free recall initiation as a decision-making process in which items compete to be retrieved. Recently, Osth and Farrell (2019) applied evidence accumulation models to complete RT distributions and serial positions of participants’ first recalls in free recall which resulted in some novel conclusions about primacy and recency effects. Specifically, the results of the modeling favored an account in which primacy was due to reinstatement of the start-of-the-list and recency was found to be exponential in shape. In this work, we examine what happens when participants are given alternative recall instructions. Prior work has demonstrated weaker primacy and greater recency when fewer items are required to report (Ward & Tan, 2019), and a key question is whether this change in instructions affects which items are in competition for recall, or the parameters of the recall competition. We conducted an experiment where participants studied 12 item lists and were post-cued as to whether to retrieve a single item, or as many items as possible. Subsequently, we applied LBA models with various assumptions about primacy and recency, implemented using hierarchical Bayesian techniques. While greater recency was observed when only one item was required for output, the model selection did not suggest there were qualitative differences between the two conditions. Specifically, start-of-list reinstatement and exponential recency functions were favored in both conditions.

Modeling the continuous recognition paradigm to determine how retrieval can impact subsequent retrievals

“…In models such as the temporal context model (TCM; Howard & Kahana, 2002) and the Osth and Dennis (2015) model, changes in context produce an exponential relationship between the similarity of the current context and the stored context. However, decades of research have found that the forgetting curves for recognition and other memory tasks are best described by a power function (Anderson & Schooler, 1991;Deffenbacher et al, 2008;Donkin & Nosofsky, 2012a;Rubin & Wenzel, 1996;Wickelgren, 1974Wickelgren, , 1975Wixted & Ebbesen, 1991, but see Osth & Farrell, 2019and Osth et al, 2021, for exceptions in free recall tasks). A solution to this is to assume that context elements drift at different rates (Howard et al, 2015;Mozer et al, 2009).…”