Recall and recognition in intentional and incidental learning.

Participants were trained and tested to move a mouse cursor from a start position to targets on a circular display in a perceptual-motor reversal condition, with horizontal, but not vertical, reversals. During training, some participants (experimental) moved to two targets either along a single diagonal axis (D1) or along both axes (D2). For D2, return movements from the targets were in the same direction as instructed movements to unpracticed targets. Others (control) trained on all targets. Testing always involved all targets. At test, movement times (to reach the target after leaving the start position) were shorter on trained than on untrained targets, especially for the D1 condition, documenting training specificity. However, movement times in the experimental conditions to new targets during testing were shorter than those in the control condition during training, documenting transfer of learning, with more transfer for D2 than for D1. Initiation times (to leave the start position after target onset) showed no transfer. The results provide evidence that specificity and transfer are not mutually exclusive and depend on the measure used to assess performance.

Section: Initiation Timessupporting

confidence: 79%

mentioning

confidence: 59%

Exploring specificity of speeded aiming movements: Examining different measures of transfer

Wohldmann

Healy

2010

“…We cannot be sure why this happens, but it seems reasonable to suppose that instructions to learn encourage verbal associations-shipwreck, north; firecracker, west-that reduce the effective time spent on each word and at the same time provide a poorer basis for location recall than the spatial information that would have been "automatically" recorded without those instructions. This supposition is of a piece with Eagle and Leiter's (1964) view that "intention to learn is crucial for learning only to the extent that it generates adequate learning operations." Recent findings of Paivio and Csapo (1973), showing that imagery benefits free recall even under conditions of incidental learning, are also consistent with the present argument.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition memory and the recall of spatial location

Schulman

1973

It is argued that memory for events should depend on the ability to recall their attributes. Two experiments suggest that this is so for the attribute of spatial location. When words presented in spatial arrays were later re-presented in a joint test of recognition memory and location recall, it was found that the surer one's recognition, the greater the accuracy of location recall. Instructions to attend to a word's location resulted in poorer recognition memory and marginally poorer location recall than were obtained when location was "incidentally" learned. Finally, when words were presented in color as well as in space, recognition memory was best when both attributes were recalled, was better when only location was recalled than when only color was recalled, and was poorest when neither attribute was recalled.

“…Eagle and Leiter (1964) found an interaction between memory condition and type of memory test. Participants heard a series of 36 words at about a 4-sec rate; this was followed by a recall test and, subsequently, by a recognition test.…”

Section: Early Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intent to remember briefly presented human faces and other pictorial stimuli enhances recognition memory

Block

2009

Does intending to remember information enhance the subsequent remembering of it? If intending to remember information does improve memory, how quickly can attentional or working memory resources be allocated to enhance long-term remembering? Interestingly, the Latin origin of the words intend and attend is intendere, which is translated as "to direct one's attention." In the present experiments, the basic manipulation is that some people encode information without awareness that a memory test will follow (henceforth, incidental memory or incidental condition), whereas other people encode the same information with awareness that a memory test will follow (henceforth, intentional memory or intentional condition). Following the presentation of a series of pictorial stimuli, recognition memory was tested. Early StudiesScientific studies of the effects of incidental versus intentional memory date to the early days of experimental psychology (Meumann, 1913;Shellow, 1923). (The near-synonymous terms incidental learning and intentional learning usually refer to conditions in studies of the rate at which people acquire a perceptual motor skill or a verbal learning task.) During the 1950s and 1960s, research sometimes revealed positive effects of intent to remember on memory performance (e.g., Neimark & Saltzman, 1953;Postman & Phillips, 1954;Saltzman & Atkinson, 1954;Saltzman & Carterette, 1959). However, as Saltzman (1953) noted, many studies contained a serious confounding: "In the previous studies, . . . the incidental learners were not given instructions to learn, but were required to perform [an] orienting task. The intentional learners . . . were given instructions to learn, but were not required to perform [an] orienting task" (p. 596).Eagle and Leiter (1964) found an interaction between memory condition and type of memory test. Participants heard a series of 36 words at about a 4-sec rate; this was followed by a recall test and, subsequently, by a recognition test. In one condition, the participants were told simply to try to remember the words for a recall test. In two other conditions, the participants performed an orienting task (indicating whether each presented word was a noun, a verb, or an adjective), with some participants in an incidental condition and some in an intentional condition. Participants who performed the orienting task showed no effect of intent to remember on either recall tests or recognition tests. However, there was an interesting interaction: In comparison with participants in the orienting-task conditions, participants in the intentionalmemory condition (who performed no orienting task) recalled more words ( p .001, d 0.72) but recognized fewer words ( p .001, d 0.85). 1 This finding suggests that intent to remember may facilitate recall but impair recognition memory; however, this interaction could have resulted from the fact that the participants in the intentional condition expected a recall test. Estes and Da Polito (1967) reported similar findings, although their procedure confou...