Arnold, M. M., & Lindsay, D. S. (2002). Remembering
remembering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 28, 521-529.
Topic:
Forget-it-all effect:
You forget about what you talked about.
Task
Participants study some verbal materials, and did two recall
tests in separate occasions.
In the second recall occasion, Ss are also asked whether they
recalled each item in the first recall test.
What is Schooler’s forgot-it-all explanation?
Exp. 1
Stimuli
Pairs of homographic words and disambiguating context words
(Palm, Beach).
113 homographs with 2 dominant meanings (palm as a tree,
palm as a part of a hand).
3 lists of 35 words (= 105, 4 words are used as primacy buffer,
and 4 words are used as recency buffer).
3 lists are “studied context”, “other-context”, and “not-tested”
within-subjects conditions.
1st cued recall test:
2/3 of the target words
Half of them are cued with the word with the same context as
the homographikc words are shown. The remaining half were
cued with different contexts.
2nd recall test
All words are cued with the same context as studied.
Ss also reported which words were recalled in the 1st test.
Participants
26 undergraduates (2 removed because they failed to follow the
instructions)
Procedure
study
Ss were told that a context word and a target word will be
shown on the computer screen for 2 sec.
The task was to repeat the words aloud for the subsequent
memory task
The two words were removed, and a sentence containing the
context word and a row of asterisks for the target word was
presented for 3.5s.
Ss read the sentence aloud with the target word filling in the
blank.
After 3.5s, the target word appeared above the sentence for 1
sec, then the screen become blank, and a next trial was given
after 1sec.
1. (palm, tree). – 2sec
2. I love climbing on a *** tree. – 3.5 sec
3. palm
I love climbing on a *** tree. – 1 sec
4. blank – 1sec
1st cued recall test (immediately after the study phase)
Ss were told that half of the target words would be tested (but
actually, they were tested on 2/3 of the target words).
(tree – p_ _m) or (hand – p_ _ m)
Ss were also instructed that half of the target words would be
shown in the same context as shown in the study phase (tree –
p_ _m); and the remaining half would be shown in different
contexts as shown in the study phase (hand – p_ _ m).
5 minute break;
2nd cued-recall test
All 105 target words were tested.
= 1st cued-recall test
Ss were told that all of the context words provided in this
session correspond to the contexts provided in the study phase.
Ss received feedback after their response
Ss were then asked to remember whether they remember to
have recalled the word in the 1st cued recall test.
Results:
1 st cued recall test
Those cued with the same context as in the study phase were
recalled significantly more than those cued with different
contexts.
2nd cued recall test
The focus of the analysis is the judgment of previous recollection (tested in
the 2nd cued-recall test), as compared in those words that were cued in the
same context or in different contexts in the 1st cued test.
For this, analyses are applied to those target items that were
recalled correctly both in the 1st cued recall test and in the 2nd
cued recall test.
Those words that were cued with the same context in the 1st
cued-test were judged as “being recalled” significantly more
than those words that were cued with different contexts.
This creates a situation in which those events that are
recollected in different contexts are forgotten. (judged that these
words are not shown in the first recalling test).
Exp. 2
Goal:
Make sure that the reason why being forgotten is because Ss
think about something else (different context).
Introduce an other context condition in the 2nd cued-recall test,
and check that those words that were cued by different context
words are judged to be recalled less than those were
design
6 within-Ss conditions:
The status of cuing context
(1st vs. 2nd cued test) = (study, study), (other, study), (not-tested,
study), (study, other), (other, other), (nostudied, other)
Procedure:
Study:
(palm, hand)
And Ss heard a sentence containing the target word
“He swatted the fly with the palm of his hand.”
Results
Exp. 3
Goal
Studied and other contexts were different only slightly, and
examine if those items that were considered in a slightly
different context also reduce their memory traces.
Study phase
(palm, hand)
Ss heard a sentence containing the target word
“He swatted the fly with the palm of his hand.”
Test context:
Studied context
“He swatted the fly with the p*** of his hand.”
Other context
“The fortune teller traced the lifetime on the palm of his hand.”
Design: 6 within-Ss conditions
(1 test context, 2nd test context)
(study, study), (other, study), (not tested, study), (study, other),
(other, other), (not tested, other)
Result
(study, study)=0.93 > sf (other, study)=0.63
Exp. 4