Abstract
Stimulus probability and amount of information feedback were varied factorially to determine their effects on kindergartners’ response biases in a continuous recognition memory task. The results showed that when subjects received trial-by-trial feedback, there was a direct relationship between the tendency to respond “old” and the proportion of items that were in fact old. However, when no information was given about stimulus probabilities, the bias for reporting “old” varied inversely with the proportion of items that was actually old. It was also determined that this latter type of bias was at least partially due to the occurrence of first-order sequential stimulus contrast; that is, the tendency to respond “old” was found to be greater when the stimulus item on the preceding trial was new than when it was old.
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This study was supported by a grant from the Research Allocations Committee of the University of New Mexico. The author is grateful to the administrative and teaching staffs of the Children’s Garden Center and the Albuquerque Preschool and Kindergarten Co-operative for providing subjects for’ this research. Thanks are also extended to Sheldon Benson for his assistance in data collection.
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Berch, D.B. Effects of stimulus probability and information feedback on response biases in children’s recognition memory. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 10, 328–330 (1977). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329351
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329351