University of Tasmania
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Item effects in recognition memory for words

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 08:38 authored by Freeman, E, Heathcote, A, Chalmers, K, Hockley, W
We investigate the effects of word characteristics on episodic recognition memory using analyses that avoid Clark’s (1973) “language-as-a-fixed-effect” fallacy. Our results demonstrate the importance of modeling word variability and show that episodic memory for words is strongly affected by item noise (Criss & Shiffrin, 2004), as measured by the orthographic similarity between experimental items. We found that the word frequency effect was not related to the item noise effects, whereas the effect of neighborhood density, which measures the similarity of a word to all other words in the lexicon, was greatly attenuated when item noise was controlled. Our results are also consistent with a likelihood based recognition decision mechanism that produces a mirror effect by taking into account item and subject characteristics.

History

Publication title

Journal of Memory and Language

Volume

62

Pagination

1-18

ISSN

0749-596X

Department/School

Tasmanian School of Medicine

Publisher

Academic Press Inc Elsevier Science

Place of publication

525 B St, Ste 1900, San Diego, USA, Ca, 92101-4495

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in psychology

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Categories

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC