In four studies, recognition memory for faces rated as similar to a prototype was found to be inferior to memory for faces rated as unusual in appearance. This result was obtained under both incidental and intentional learning conditions, at presentation rates ranging from 3 to 15 sec, and with retention intervals from 3 to 24 hr. A fifth experiment established interitem similarity as the structural basis of this typicality effect in recognition memory. Difficulties in interpreting the findings in terms of some current models for classification learning, depth of processing models, or present models of the word frequency effect are discussed.

Attention↗

PubMed1976

Are there long-term "literal copies" of visually presented words?

Evidence for the hypothesis that the appearance of visually presented words is stored in "literal copy" form is critically evaluated and shown to be inconclusive. An experiment in which students were required to retain information about zero, one, or two visual properties of words is reported. A strong version of the literal-copy hypothesis predicts that retention of both case and color should be equally good under instructions to remember one of these attributes and instructions to remember both. However, the results were inconsistent with predictions from this hypothesis. A model that assumes that each visual attribute is stored independently in abstract propositional form provided a good quantitative fit to the data.

Color Perception↗

PubMed1975

Trade-off between memory for verbal items and their visual attributes.

Instructions to attend to the case and color in which words were presented led to improved retention of these visual attributes but depressed recognition performance. This trade-off between item and attribute memory occurred at three presentation rates (1.5, 5.5, and 10.5 sec/item), suggesting that visual attributes of verbal stimuli are rarely stored unless subjects expect that knowledge of physical form will be useful later. Visual attributes of high-imagery words were retained better than visual attributes of low imagery words by subjects instructed to attend to case and color, but not by subjects asked only to attend to word meaning. Implications of these findings for the hypothesis that visually presented verbal stimuli are stored as literal copies are discussed.

Color Perception↗

PubMed1968

Availability growth and latent verbal learning.

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Association↗