Retrieval of internally versus externally generated words in episodic memory

McFarland, Carl E.; Frey, Trudy J.; Rhodes, Deborah D.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(80)90182-6

Cited by 105 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In particular, these are studies that included no index of cognitive effort (e.g., Ellis, Thomas, & Rodriguez, 1984;Jacoby, 1978;Jacoby, Craik, & Begg, 1979;McFarland, Frey, & Rhodes, 1980;Rabinowitz, Ackerman, Craik, & Hinchley, 1982;Zacks, Hasher, Sanft, & Rose, 1983). In addition, a number of studies have included independent measures of difficulty (processing times) but not of cognitive effort (Cairns, Cowart, & Jablon, 1981;Einstein, McDaniel, Bowers, & Stevens, 1984;McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, & Cobb, 1986;McDaniel et al, 1988;O'Brien & Myers, 1985).…”

Section: Empirical Studies Of Cognitive Effort and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

How much “effort” should be devoted to memory?

Mitchell

Hunt

1989

Memory & Cognition

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We focus on the issue of whether cognitive effort is causally related to memory. We begin with a discussion of the concept of cognitive effort as derived from capacity models of attention. We then suggest that the theoretical analysis of memory may involve concepts from different levels of psychological analysis, and we draw a distinction between concepts that represent boundary conditions and sufficient cause. When applied to memory phenomena, attentional concepts serve only as a boundary-or limiting-function in memory theory. In contrast, concepts that represent memorial processes serve as a sufficient cause function. In some instances, cognitive effort appears to have been used as a sufficient cause concept, resulting in some confusion. A review of the literature reveals a haphazard correlation between indexes of cognitive effort and of memory performance. Alternatively, the application of cognitive effort or capacity to the memory performance of certain populations (clinical, children, and elderly) illustrates a potentially more appropriate use of the concept.Whatever future conclusion we may reach as to this, we cannot denythat an object once attended to will remain in the memory, whilst one inattentively allowed to pass will leave no traces behind. (James, 1890, p. 427) The conceptsof attentionand memory have been perennially interwoven in the fabric of cognitive theory. Any adequate theory of intellectual functioning must eventually describe the interaction between these concepts, as well as provide a coherent account of the two concepts separately. Research and theory on these concepts logically precede description of their interaction, but the inextricable intertwining of attention and memory sometimes encourages the transfer of concepts from attention to explanations of memory. Since theories of attentionand theories of memory, as separate conceptual systems, are designed to address different questions, borrowing concepts from attention to explain questions about memory can lead to confusion and, occasionally, to illogical propoThis article is based in part on a symposium at the 91st Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Anaheim, CA (Hunt, 1983 sitions. It is our position that some conceptual confusion has arisen over the application of the attentional concept of cognitive effort as an explanatory mechanism of memory phenomena.The goal of a theory of attention, in large part, is to describe the selective and limited character of cognitive functioning. The empiricalbasis for this work has derived historically from the question, "How many things can be done at one time?" Dependentmeasures of memory have often been used to answer this empirical question. Memory measures are prevalent in empirical studies of attention because theories of attention typically specify a mechanism for selection, and memory performance can be predicted from the hypotheticaloperation of this selection mechanism. For example, Broadbent's (1958)model of attention assumed that the processes responsible f...

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Section: Empirical Studies Of Cognitive Effort and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

How much “effort” should be devoted to memory?

Mitchell

Hunt

1989

Memory & Cognition

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“…This was true for a relatively wide range of presentation conditions, using recall, recognition, and confidence-rating measures. This effect appears to be due to more than simple elaboration, since the same result was later obtained even when the group that received imposed names was given a task that required describing whether a word fit the specified context (McFarland, Frey, & Rhodes, 1980). The present study attempts to extend these generation results to command naming.…”

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confidence: 60%

“…Subjects in the name-study condition were presented with a command name accompanying each of the 24 before-after stimulus pairs. Subjects rated the command for each pair on a 9-point scale with (McFarland et al, 1980). That personal character in tum probably functions by reducing the arbitrariness of relationships (Stein, Littlefield, Bransford, & Persampieri, 1984).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering computer command names: Effects of subject generation versus experimenter imposition

Sebrechts

Furstenberg

Shelton

1986

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers

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Two experiments analyzed the effectiveness of goal statements in aiding recall of self-generated as opposed to experimenter-imposed command names. Subjects were presented with a series of before-after pairs representing the computer states before and after a command was executed. In Experiment 1, during study, one group of subjects generated a command name in response to each pair; a second group generated a goal statement describing the goal to be accomplished in addition to generating a command name. During recall, half of each group was required to recall the name, whereas the other half was required to describe the goal before attempting to recall the name. In Experiment 2, during study, command names (and goals for those subjects in the goal condition) were imposed by the experimenter rather than generated by the subject. Subjects who generated goals and names recalled more command names than did those who generated only names or who received imposed goals and/or names. Generation of an appropriate goal at study improved encoding by helping subjects to select more appropriate command names; generation of an appropriate goal at test improved retrieval for appropriate names only, presumably by activating a relevant subset of names. Even in the relatively simple task of naming and remembering command names, having an appropriate model of the domain through the use of specific goal statements substantially improved performance.Using computers requires a precise way to specify the tasks that the computer is to perform: this constitutes what is called the command language problem. There are, of course, many alternative ways to implement a command language, including specific command terms, a natural language interface, icons, and menu selection.This paper focuses on the use of specific command names, a common practice in most current computer systems. The main concerns here are: (1) does selfgeneration provide a usable set of command names, and (2) what characteristics are important for optimal command generation and recall.Previous studies have suggested a number of problems with having novice subjects generate command names (see Black & Sebrechts, 1981). In a study by Landauer, Galotti, and Hartwell (1983), subjects were asked to pro- vide a procedure for a series of editing changes. There was no substantial agreement across subjects on basic names for operations. Furthermore, many subjects did not even use the same verb for two different instances of the same type of correction.In a second study, Landauer et al. (1983) compared the learning of a simplified text editor using one of three types of command names: the modal ("natural") responses from the previous generation study, standard UNIX ED commands, and random names. They found no reliable differences in time to complete a basic set of tasks based on the type of command name, suggesting that the natural naming does not produce more memorable names.In a related study, Black and Moran (1982) had a group of subjects generate single-sentence descriptions of th...

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“…A series of studies by Wittrock and his associates have provided confirmation of the facilitative effect of generation tasks (Doctorow et al, 1978;Linden & Wittrock, 1981;Marks, Doctorow, & Wittrock, 1974. ) Further support for this conclusion has appeared in recent reports in the psychological literature of a superiority in memory for subjectgenerated word lists over experimenter-provided lists (Jacoby, 1978;McFarland et al, 1980;Slamecka & Graf, 1978). This generation effect is hypothesized to be the result of more active participation on the part of the learner, resulting in greater breadth or depth of meaningful processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972;Craik & Tulving, 1975).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…It might be argued that topicalized passages should enjoy a recall advantage because they provide a clear statement of the main idea (the topic sentence) that can be encoded and retrieved later. Alternatively, recent data has shown that memory following difficult tasks is better than memory following easy processing tasks (Jacoby, Craik, & Begg, 1979;Tyler, Hertel, McCallum, & Ellis, 1979) and better for self-generated than externally-provided material (Jacoby, 1978;McFarland, Frey, & Rhodes, 1980;Slamecka & Graf, 1978). This research suggests that memory for main ideas from non-topicalized passages should be equal to, or perhaps even better than, memory from topicalized passages, especially when meaningful comprehension tasks are required during reading.…”

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confidence: 90%

Topicalization and Memory for Main Ideas in Prose

Bridge

Belmore

Moskow

et al. 1984

Journal of Reading Behavior

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Two experiments compared the effects of text structure and processing task requirements on memory for the main idea of a passage. College students identified as good or poor readers read a series of short passages in which an initial topic sentence was either present (topicalized) or absent (non-topicalized). In Experiment 1, all subjects were required to generate a title for each passage during reading and then were given a forced-choice recognition test for the main idea of each passage. The results showed that subjects performed better on topicalized passages than non-topicalized passages in both the title generation task and recognition memory. In the second experiment, subjects performed one of three meaningful processing tasks: rating comprehensibility of the passage, choosing the most appropriate main idea, or generating the main idea in their own words. There were no differences due to passage type for either processing task performance or recall of the main ideas, nor were good and poor readers differentially affected by passage type. Generating a main idea sentence following reading resulted in significantly better memory for both good and poor readers than did rating comprehensibility. These results support the position that generative activities facilitate learning of main ideas, even for passages with poor text structure. This finding is important in view of recent studies indicating that the majority of paragraphs written for both children and adults lack an explicit main idea sentence.Reading may be viewed as an interaction between reader and text (Rumelhart, 1977). Thus, comprehension of a prose passage can be affected by 61

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Retrieval of internally versus externally generated words in episodic memory

Cited by 105 publications

References 17 publications

How much “effort” should be devoted to memory?

How much “effort” should be devoted to memory?

Remembering computer command names: Effects of subject generation versus experimenter imposition

Topicalization and Memory for Main Ideas in Prose

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