The mixed truth about frequency effects on free recall: Effects of study list composition

Ozubko, Jason D.; Joordens, Steve

doi:10.3758/bf03194114

Cited by 21 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…Given that Experiment 1 and others (e.g. Dunlap & Dunlap, 1979; Ozubko & Joordens, 2007) have found no such word frequency effect on free recall, we tentatively conclude that word frequency is not a powerful influence on the episodic retrieval of a word.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 40%

Phrase frequency effects in free recall: Evidence for redintegration

Jacobs

Dell

Bannard

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

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Four experiments examined the effects of word and phrase frequency on free recall. Word frequency did not affect word recall, but when participants studied and recalled lists of compositional adjective-noun phrases (e.g. alcoholic beverages), phrase frequency had a consistently beneficial effect: both words from frequent phrases were more likely to be recalled than for infrequent phrases, providing evidence that long-term memory for phrases can aid in pattern completion, or redintegration. We explain these results and those of a previous study of phrase frequency effects in recognition memory (Jacobs et al., 2016) by assuming that the language processing system provides features that are linked to episodic contexts. Recall tasks map from these contexts to linguistic elements, and recognition maps from linguistic elements to contexts. Word and phrase frequency effects in both memory tasks emerge both within the language processing system and from multiple stored episodes, and the fact that the representations of phrases are tied to knowledge of their component words, rather than being representational islands.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 40%

Phrase frequency effects in free recall: Evidence for redintegration

Jacobs

Dell

Bannard

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…Unfortunately, SAM is generally not considered a viable model for single item recognition owing to several key pieces of data (e.g., ) which led to the development of a new generation of Bayesian models (i.e., Dennis & Humphreys, 2001;McClelland & Chappell, 1998;Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997). Nevertheless, the associative hypothesis for the HF benefit in free recall persists and is frequently evoked to explain the WF effect in free recall (e.g., Ozubko & Joordens, 2007;Stuart & Hulme, 2000). Two other dominant hypotheses about the WF effect in free recall are the order-encoding hypothesis (DeLosh & McDaniel, 1996;Merritt, DeLosh, & McDaniel, 2006;Toglia & Kimble, 1976) and the recency hypothesis (Tan & Ward, 2000;Ward, Woodward, Stevens, & Stinson, 2003).…”

Section: Models Of Free Recallmentioning

confidence: 97%

The effects of word frequency and context variability in cued recall

Criss

Aue

Smith

2011

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…Finally, the proposal that HF words are just easier to retrieve cannot explain why the effects disappear in mixed lists (e.g. Ozubko & Joordens, 2007; see Section "Pure vs mixed list paradoxes" for an in-depth discussion of pure vs mixed lists).…”

Section: Effects Of Word Frequency On Free Recalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The HF advantage in free recall holds only for pure lists, and is absent or reduced when stimuli of different frequency are mixed within a list, a phenomenon often referred to as the mixed list paradox (e.g. Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984;MacLeod & Kampe, 1996;Ozubko & Joordens, 2007;Ward et al, 2003;Watkins et al, 2000). The typical result is that the presence of LF items on the list hurts memory for HF items, and the presence of HF items on the list helps memory for LF items (i.e., performance for HF pure > HF mixed ~ LF mixed > LF pure; see Figure 17).…”

Section: Pure Vs Mixed List Paradoxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, HF words are more likely to have preexisting semantic associations to one another, which can facilitate the formation of associations among HF words on the study list (e.g. Deese, 1960;Ozubko & Joordens, 2007;Sumby, 1963). Second, high-frequency words are considered to be more accessible and easier to generate, which facilitates their retrieval during free recall (e.g.…”

Section: Effects Of Word Frequency On Free Recalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

Popov¹,

Reder²

2018

Preprint

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We present a review of frequency effects in memory, accompanied by a theory of memory, according to which the storage of new information in long-term memory (LTM) depletes a limited pool of working memory (WM) resources as an inverse function of item strength. We support the theory by showing that items with stronger representations in LTM (e.g. high frequency items) are easier to store, bind to context, and bind to one another; that WM resources are involved in storage and retrieval from LTM; that WM capacity is greater for stronger, more familiar stimuli. We present a novel analysis of preceding item strength, in which we show from eight existing studies that memory for an item is higher if during study it was preceded by a stronger item (e.g. a high frequency word; HF). This effect is cumulative (the more prior items are HF, the better), continuous (memory proportional to word frequency of preceding item), interacts with current item strength (larger for weaker items) and interacts with lag (decreases as the lag between the current and prior study item increases). A computational model that implements the theory is presented, which accounts for these effects. We discuss related phenomena that the model/theory can explain.

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The mixed truth about frequency effects on free recall: Effects of study list composition

Cited by 21 publications

References 13 publications

Phrase frequency effects in free recall: Evidence for redintegration

Phrase frequency effects in free recall: Evidence for redintegration

The effects of word frequency and context variability in cued recall

Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

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