Abstract
The effects of list composition and word frequency on cued recall, associative recognition, and item recognition were examined in three experiments For pure-frequency lists, cued recall and associative recognition show better performance on common high-frequency (HF) words than on rare low-frequency (LF) words. Item recognition, however, shows an advantage for LF words. In mixed lists, consisting of half HF and half LF words, the HF advantage in cued recall disappeared; however, the word frequency effects in item and associative recognition were unchanged. These results are inconsistent with explanations based on differential attention or co-rehearsal of KF and LF words. However, the results are consistent with list strength results which show that recognition is insensitive to strength-based list composition, but that recall is sensitive to list composition.
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This research was supported by Grant DBS-9120911 from the National Science Foundation, and by a grant from the Academic Senate of the University of California. Riverside.
These experiments were reported at the 32nd meeting of the Psychonomic Society in San Francisco, November 1991
—Accepted by previous editor, Margaret Jean Intont-Peterson
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Clark, S.E., Burchett, R.E.R. Word frequency and list composition effects in associative recognition and recall. Mem Cogn 22, 55–62 (1994). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202761
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202761