Remembering operations

Abstract

Two commonplace assumptions about encoding are that sentences are encoded and recognized on the basis of their semantic features primarily and that information regarding form features such as typography is typically ignored or discarded. These assumptions were tested in the present experiment where, within a signal-detection paradigm, S sorted sentences according to whether he had seen them before or not (old vs new) and, if they were old, whether their reappearance was in the same typography as on the first occurrence or a different one. Of the two typographies, one was familiar and the other unfamiliar. Results show that a considerable amount of information regarding surface features is stored for many minutes and that ease of initial encoding is inversely related to likelihood of subsequent recognition: sentences in the unfamiliar typography were remembered better. The results are probably not due to time spent encoding; control tests suggest that time spent encoding a difficult typography does not by itself increase recognition of the semantic content embodied in the typography. Other control tests show that pictorial features or images of the sentences play no significant role in their subsequent recognition. One interpretation of the results is that the analytic activities or cognitive operations that characterize initial acquisition playa significant role in subsequent recognition.We never perceive the world directly, hence what we remember can never be a direct copy of the world. Modern theorists emphasize the notion that perception and memory are selective: we perceive and remember features of the object or event that we have attended to. But how do we first perceive features? Features themselves are the results of perceptual encodings and operations; they are not "given" by the stimulus. They are useful descriptive categories, but must themselves have been created as perceptual events in some way. We may say, for example, that in reading a sentence we noticed this or that feature about it, its grammar, length, type size, and the like; in doing so we are using learned response categories to describe our experiences, but we are not defining anything basic about the processes of remembering. What we have done is to take the results of perceptual encoding-features-and sought to explain the processes of encoding in their terms; but features are not perceived directly any more than the object itself is. Hence, it means little to say that we recognize an object by virtue of recognizing its features, for the statement is a tautology.A somewhat different view can be formulated as follows: What is recognized or remembered are the analytical operations themselves that have been used to transform an optical input into a perceptual experience. To put it another way, it can be alleged that we remember not only things or events (semantic features), but what we have done to acquire, apprehend, or attain EXPERIMENT I EFFECTS OF APPEARANCE Method MaterialsThirteen different passages of connected discourse were taken fr...

The role of elaborative and schema processes in story memory

“…These results extend earlier findings of studies that had used less complex verbal material (Jacoby, 1978;Kolers, 1973;McDaniel, 1981). They also support the recent reformulations of levels of processing that focus on the elaborateness of processing and the resulting distinctiveness of the trace (Eysenck, 1979;Lockhart et al, 1976).…”

“…They found that pairs for which one of the words had missing letters were remembered better than pairs for which both words were intact. More generally, the present result adds to a growing list of studies in which increasing the difficulty of processing an item has enhanced memory for that item (Kolers, 1973;Masson & Sala, 1978;McDaniel, 1981).…”

The Effect of Details on the Recall of Major Ideas in Text

“…The results of the present study are consistent with several theoretical perspectives on memory (e.g., Anderson & Reder, 1979;Craik & Tulving, 1975;JohnsonLaird, Gibbs, & DeMowbray, 1978;Kolers, 1973Kolers, , 1975. For example, our results could have been predicted from Craik and Tulving's (1975) variant of the levels-of-processing perspective known as elaboration of processing.…”

Source-constrained retrieval influences the encoding of new information

“…It appears, then, that we unintentionally actively process items on a second occasion in much the same way as we processed them on the first occasion, even without any explicit requirement to do so. This is not surprising: It is in accord with the idea of transfer-appropriate processing (Morris et al, 1977), which meshes well with the proceduralist view of memory (Kolers, 1973;Kolers & Roediger, 1984). It is worth noting, however, that the benefit of transfer-appropriate processing stems from processing during encoding, whereas the benefit of source-constrained retrieval results from reprocessing of items during testing.…”