Item and Associative Information in Human Memory

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Research in human memory has shown that one's memory for an event is a structured collection of different kinds of information. For example, if we meet someone at a cocktail party, we might store visual information regarding the person's appearance, phonemic and verbal information representing the person's name and its spelling, semantic information and impressions, plus various kinds of background context. This research will investigate the roles of different kinds of information in recall and recognition. The research focuses on the distinction between item-specific and associative information, a distinction which has a long history in psychology, and is a cornerstone of current mathematical models of memory. In 10 experiments (plus several variations), people will study lists of words; the kinds of materials and the encoding conditions will vary across experiments. Following list presentation, these individuals will be tested using free and cued recall and item and associative recognition testing procedures. These testing procedures vary in the kinds of information and the kinds of retrieval processes which are necessary for adequate performance. For example, recall and associative recognition depend primarily on associations formed between words, whereas item recognition does not. An important question in this research regards the role of nonnecessary information. For example, associative information need not be retrieved in making recognition decisions about individual words. What role does the associative information play? Regarding retrieval processes, recall tasks require the recovery and production of retrieved information, whereas recognition testing does not. Comparisons among these test procedures and how they are sensitive to manipulations in materials and study conditions will provide important information concerning the representation and retrieval of information from memory. Moreover, the results of these experiments will be important in testing and developing current mathematical models of memory.