The Moderating Role of Feedback on Forgetting in Item Recognition
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Moderating Role of Feedback on Forgetting in Item Recognition Aslı Kılıç 1
&
Jessica Fontaine 2 & Kenneth J. Malmberg 3 & Amy H. Criss 2
# Society for Mathematical Psychology 2020
Abstract We conducted three experiments specifically designed to simultaneously evaluate the effects on recognition accuracy of adding items during study and adding items during test. The recognition memory list-length effect (LLE) is small and unreliable (Annis et al. 2015; Dennis et al. 2008), but additional test trials produce a robust decrease in accuracy, termed output interference (OI; Criss et al. 2011; Kılıç et al. 2017). This is puzzling; why should the size of the effect of additional stimulus exposures depend on whether the item was studied or tested (Malmberg et al. 2012)? We found a decrease in accuracy when stimulus exposures were added at any stage. However, the harm of adding items during study was less than the output interference that resulted from testing. In addition, feedback presented during test served as a moderator. When feedback was given, OI was diminished, and the LLE increased. Within the framework of our model, this suggests that testing with no feedback often results in the encoding of additional information in a trace originally encoded during study, and testing with feedback decreases the tendency to update traces during test. Several possible accounts of feedback reducing trace updating are discussed. Keywords Item recognition . Output interference . List length effect . Memory models . Feedback
Errors in memory range from a daily annoyance to a threat to health and freedom. Understanding the nature of memory errors and the sources of forgetting has important practical and theoretical implications. Most theories of memory assume that forgetting is the result of interference caused by irrelevant memories during retrieval (Anderson et al. 1998; Dennis and Humphreys 2001; Murdock 1982; Raaijmakers and Shiffrin 1981; Reder et al. 2000). Interference is often investigated using a study-test procedure, whereby subjects study lists of items and later memory for those items is tested. Interference is produced when items are encoded during study. For example, when associations are created between similar items (e.g., study AC following the study of AD), making it more difficult to retrieve either pair (Crowder 1976, for a review). Likewise,
interference may be a result of storing new memories during testing (Wickens 1970). Two experimental findings in the recognition literature— the list length effect and output interference—demonstrate increased forgetting with increases in interference from storing additional events in memory during study and test, respectively. We conducted three experiments specifically designed to tease apart the effects of adding items during study and adding items during test on recognition memory, and the results are interpreted within a retrieving effectively from memory model (Shiffrin and Steyvers 1997; Criss et al. 2011). To foreshadow, we find that testing co
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