Remembering “primed” words: A counter-intuitive effect of repetition on recognition memory

Abstract

The present study examines the effect of immediate repetition on recognition memory. In a series of 4 experiments, the study phase task was to name aloud a word that was immediately preceded by either the same word (repeated trials) or a different word (not-repeated trials). Across experiments, performance in the study phase demonstrated the anticipated benefit in naming times for repeated trials. More important, performance in the test phase revealed greater sensitivity for not-repeated than repeated trials. This effect was observed even when repetitions at study were separated by an unrelated word (Experiment 3), and was eliminated only when participants named both words in succession at study (Experiment 4). These findings fit nicely with the desirable difficulty principle (R. A. Bjork, 1994), as they demonstrate that items more easily processed at study (i.e., repeated items) are not as well-encoded as items that are more difficult to process at study (i.e., not-repeated items). Furthermore, the current study points to the possibility that attentional orienting in response to processing difficulty may constitute a broadly important cognitive control adaptation that impacts memory encoding.

Remembering ‘primed’ words: The effect of prime encoding demands.

“…Indeed, there were null effects of repetition on recognition performance in the vowel count and name groups, and greater sensitivity for repeated than for not-repeated targets in the semantic group. These results demonstrate the counter-intuitive finding reported by Rosner et al (2017) does not always occur with the repetition method used here. Specifically, when primes are encoded in such a way that participants are likely to remember them at test (according to the levels of processing principle), recognition performance is better for repeated than for not-repeated targets.…”

“…First, as reported by Rosner et al (2017), and as observed in Experiment 1, recognition was better for not-repeated than repeated targets when participants ignored the primes in the study phase. Although this result only approached significance in the present experiment, the reliability of this effect across six similar variants of this procedure (Rosner et al, 2017; Experiment 1 of the present study) offers plenty of supporting evidence that there is a real and replicable difference in recognition memory between not-repeated and repeated target conditions. Second, recognition was just slightly better for repeated than not-repeated targets when participants read the primes in the study phase.…”

“…The purpose of the present study was to examine how prime encoding demands influence memorability of targets using an immediate priming method. We were particularly interested in the influence of prime encoding demands on the counter-intuitive result reported by Rosner et al (2017): better recognition for not-repeated targets than for repeated targets. Experiment 1 REPETITION EFFECTS ON RECOGNITION MEMORY 28 produced two notable results.…”

“…Clearly, the conditions that led to the result reported by Rosner et al (2017) require further study. Toward that aim, we examined the contribution of prime encoding demands to this effect by conducting the three experiments reported in this study.…”

“…In effect, the aim was to evaluate whether divided attention during encoding of the first of two words would produce the same result as an instruction not to do anything. If participants in the Rosner et al (2017) study engaged only in relatively low-level perceptual processing, and this was key in driving the effect, then we ought to see identical results in these two groups. Specifically, better memory for not-repeated targets than for repeated targets.…”