Abstract
Semantic encoding was directly compared to visual imagery encoding in an experimental variant of the Craik-Tulving procedure. Sixty words were presented orally in one of five encoding conditions. Two conditions were from Experiment 9 of Craik and Tulving (1975), that is, semantic category/yes and semantic category/no. Three conditions were imagery encoding conditions: single image/good, single image/bad, and interactive imagery relating pairs of words. The results for the college students tested indicate that imagery encoding gave better immediate recognition than did deep semantic encoding. Generally, recognition scores did not differ from one another within the imagery conditions, but within the semantic conditions, semantic category/yes gave higher recognition scores than did semantic category/no. The findings call for further investigation of the cognitive processes relevant to semantic as compared to imagery encoding.
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This research was supported by the Medical Research Service of the Veterans Administration. We thank Harold Schiffman of Duke University for allowing us to test his statistics class.
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Crovitz, H.F., Harvey, M.T. Visual imagery vs. semantic category as encoding conditions. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 13, 291–292 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336873
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336873