Searching for words in letter sets of varying size.

Kaplan, Ira T.; Carvellas, Thomas; Metlay, William

doi:10.1037/h0028140

Cited by 21 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Such a model was proposed by Kaplan, Carvellas and Metlay (1969) to account for the performance of people who had been asked to produce as many four-letter words as they could from sets of letters varying in number from five to ten. Indow and Togano (1970) referred to this model as the constant rate and exhaustive scanning (CRES) model, for obvious reasons.…”

Section: Lexical Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Five down, Absquatulated: Crossword puzzle clues to how the mind works

Nickerson

2011

Psychon Bull Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Doing crossword puzzles is a popular pastime; no one knows how many people do them, but estimates go as high as 50 million or more in the United States alone. Success at crossword puzzles taxes several aspects of memory and cognition. The purpose of this article is to consider hints that crosswords provide and questions that they prompt regarding how the mind works. Implicated topics include word associations, lexical memory search, semantic priming, the sparseness of word space, list generation, the feeling of knowing and of not knowing, mental aging, and the crossword puzzle as a vehicle for studying cognition.

show abstract

Section: Lexical Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Five down, Absquatulated: Crossword puzzle clues to how the mind works

Nickerson

2011

Psychon Bull Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus, subjects who were able to name a larger number of cities approached their higher asymptotes more slowly than did subjects who could name fewer cities. Kaplan, Carvellas, and Metlay (1969) showed that the inverse correlation between N and Adid not arise from individual differences between subjects because it also occurs within individuals exposed to different conditions. In their experiment, each subject was asked to generate as many 4-letter words as possible from a pool of letters ranging from 5 to 10 across conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the dynamics of free recall: An integrative review of the empirical literature

Wixted

Rohrer

1994

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

205

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Relatively few experiments have measured the time course of free recall from episodic or semantic memory. Of those that have, most report that cumulative recall is a negatively accelerated exponential (or hyperbolic) function that is characterized by two properties: asymptotic recall and rate of approach to asymptote. The most common measure of free recall performance (viz., the number of items recalled) provides a reasonably good estimate of asymptotic recall if a relatively long recall period is used (which is rare), but the effect of experimental manipulations on the rate of approach to asymptote cannot be determined without timing when recall responses occur. The research reviewed herein suggests that the rate of approach to asymptote may offer an estimate of the breadth of search through long-term memory. The search in question, unlike most ofthose investigated in the memory literature, is unique in that it requires minutes rather than milliseconds to complete.When subjects attempt to generate items from a semantic category or to recall a recently presented list of words, they do not complete the task in an instant. Instead, their performance is almost invariably characterized by intermittent successes occurring over an extended period of time. In spite of this interesting fact, memory researchers have exhibited an overwhelming preference for recording which (or how many) items are recalled during some brief period of time, regardless of the speed with which those items have been retrieved. Does the time course of free recall offer any useful information about the nature of retrieval? Because this subject is an old one that commands little attention today, one might assume that the answer is no. However, a review of the extant literature, limited as it is, suggests otherwise.Exactly what can be learned that is not already known by studying the dynamics of free recall? First, the studies that have tracked the time course of recall usually reveal that subjects continue to make progress far beyond the 1-or 2-min recall period typically provided. Indeed, Roediger and Thorpe (1978)-to take one example that will be considered in detail later-reported that recall on an episodic memory task continued to increase more than 20 min into the recall period. Moreover, a clear difference in the level of recall between two conditions (easily named pictures vs. words) became evident only after several minutes had elapsed. Had these authors used the standard brief recall period, they might have mistakenly concluded that the two conditions produced equal levels of performance. How often are incorrect conclusions arrived at because the recall period is too brief? The answer is Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to John Wixted, Department of Psychology-OfOs, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093. 89 unknown because most researchers simply ignore the potential problem.Second, most of the literature reviewed below suggests that the time course of free recall, like reaction time in the Sternber...

show abstract

“…Asymptotic recall level and rate of approaching asymptote have consistently been found to be inversely related, such that higher levels of asymptotic recall produce a slower approach to asymptote (see, e.g., Bousfield & Sedgewick, 1944;Herrmann & Chaffin, 1976;Herrmann & Murray, 1979;Johnson, Johnson, & Mark, 1951;Kaplan, Carvellas, & Metlay, 1969). However, Burns and Schoff (1998) showed that this relationship is often violated when differing levels of item-specific and relational processing are performed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Falsely recalled items are rich in item-specific information

2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Current theorizing suggests that critical lures in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure are often falsely remembered because they have received considerable relational processing (e.g., spreading activation or encoding of gist information). We used a repeated-testing paradigm to assess the amount of item-specific and relational processing given to the list items and the critical lures. Research has shown that items receiving itemspecific processing are more likely to be recovered across successive tests. They are also output more slowly but more steadily throughout the recall period. In two experiments, we manipulated the processing performed on list items and then used item gains and cumulative recall curves to assess the amount of item-specific and relational information encoded for both list items and lures. The results suggest that increasing the relational processing of list items increased item-specific processing of lures, whereas increasing item-specific processing of list items decreased item-specific processing of lures. We conclude that critical lures are typically rich in item-specific information, relative to list items.

show abstract

Searching for words in letter sets of varying size.

Cited by 21 publications

References 5 publications

Five down, Absquatulated: Crossword puzzle clues to how the mind works

Five down, Absquatulated: Crossword puzzle clues to how the mind works

Analyzing the dynamics of free recall: An integrative review of the empirical literature

Falsely recalled items are rich in item-specific information

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About