The Effects of Word Frequency and Similarity on Recognition Judgments: The Role of Recollection.

Abstract

K. J. Malmberg, J. Holden, and R. M. reported more false alarms for low-than highfrequency words when the foils were similar to the targets. According to the source of activation confusion (SAC) model of memory, that pattern is based on recollection of an underspecified episodic trace rather than the error-prone familiarity process. The authors tested the SAC account by varying whether participants were warned about the nature of similar foils and whether the recognition test required the discrimination. More false alarms for low-frequency similar items occurred only when participants were not warned at study about the subtle features to be discriminated later. The differential false-alarm rate by word frequency corresponded to the pattern of remember responses obtained when the test instructions did not ask for a subtle discrimination, supporting the SAC account that reversed false-alarm rates to similar foils are based on the recollection process.Keywords word frequency; item similarity; recognition; recollection; encoding instructions When words with different normative frequencies are studied, low-frequency words are better recognized than high-frequency words, and low-frequency words show lower false-alarm rates than high-frequency words. This effect has been termed the word frequency mirror effect (Glanzer & Adams, 1985). The word frequency mirror effect has been extensively studied in recognition (e.g., Arndt & Reder, 2002;Balota, Burgess, Cortese, & Adams, 2002;Glanzer & Adams, 1990;Guttentag & Carroll, 1997;Hintzman, 1994;Hirshman, Fisher, Henthorn, Arndt, & Passanante, 2002;Joordens & Hockley, 2000;Malmberg, Steyvers, Stephens, & Shiffrin, 2002;Murdock, 1998Murdock, ,2003Reder, Angstadt, Cary, Erickson, & Ayers, 2002), and many theoretical accounts have been proposed for it. Reder and her colleagues (Reder et al., 2000) suggested a mechanism for the word frequency mirror effect based on a dual-process model of recognition called source of activation confusion (SAC).According to the SAC account for the word frequency mirror effect, the words of different normative frequencies have different numbers of prior contextual associations that fan out from their respective concept nodes. Differential fan affects the amount of activation that spreads from the concept node to any specific memory trace such that the more links that share activation, the less activation reaches any one node. Low-frequency words have a smaller contextual fan because they have been seen less frequently. Therefore, the activation that spreads to the relevant study episode is greater when the source node sending activation is low

Models of recognition: A review of arguments in favor of a dual-process account

“…The familiarity of reversed-plurality lures should be very similar to the familiarity of the study item, thus requiring recollection of the study event to determine the exact form of the word that was seen previously. This assumption is supported by the finding that there are more know responses to similar foils than to target items in a reversed-plurality task (Park et al, 2005). 9 Also, ERP evidence shows that the FN400, which reflects brain activity that is thought to be a correlate of familiarity-based processing, does not distinguish between old items and reversed-plurality items, indicating that familiarity is the same for both types of items (Curran, 2000;Curran & Cleary, 2003).…”

“…The SAC model has also been described in previously published articles (Cary & Reder, 2003;Park, Reder, & Dickison, 2005;Reder et al, 2000;Schunn, Reder, Nhouyvanisvong, Richards, & Stroffolino, 1997). Whenever further details or model complexities are necessary to explain a set of results, these will be noted in the description of the specific implementation.…”

“…When attention is called to the importance of plurality at study, participants will try to encode plurality information as an elaboration. We assume that plurality information is not likely to be encoded when participants are not aware that it will be varied at test, because the plurality of a word is not highly salient in this type of task (Park et al, 2005).…”

“…Similar to associative recognition, successful discrimination of old words from reversed-plurality lures in the SAC model requires participants to retrieve the episode node that binds a conceptual representation of the word presented with a node representing whether or not the word was in its plural form. We treat this plurality node much like a specific context node in a font-matching experiment (see Park et al, 2005;Reder et al, 2002). An assumption of the SAC model's representation is that a concept represents the features that are associated with it.…”

Recollective and nonrecollective recall

“…Malmberg showed that this solution has much to recommend it, but he also noted that one-process models have been formulated and evaluated for both associative recognition (e.g., Wixted, 2007) and plurality discrimination (e.g., McClelland & Chappell, 1998; Park, Reder, & Dickison, 2005). Although Malmberg pointed out that some of these models make unrealistic assumptions about levels of overlap between targets and distractors, their existence means that the controversy over recognition-based measurement is unlikely to abate by switching to associative recognition and plurality discrimination.…”