Temporal associative processes revealed by intrusions in paired-associate recall

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 64 - 69
• Main Authors: Davis, Orin C., Geller, Aaron S., Rizzuto, Daniel S., Kahana, Michael J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.02.2008; Psychonomic Society; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attention; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Brief Reports; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Learning. Memory; Memory; Mental Recall; Paired-Associate Learning; Practice, Psychological; Problem Solving; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Retention, Psychology; Semantics; Serial Learning; Speech Perception; Serial Recall; Free Recall; False Memory; Serial Position; List Length; Human; Memory; Paired associate learning; Associative relation; Cognition; Recall; Time; Experimental study; Cued recall
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/PBR.15.1.64

Although much is known about the factors that influence the acquisition and retention of individual paired associates, the existence of temporally defined associations spanning multiple pairs has not been demonstrated. We report two experiments in which subjects studied randomly paired nouns for a subsequent cued recall test. When subjects recalled nontarget items, their intrusions tended to come from nearby pairs. This across-pair contiguity effect was graded, spanning noncontiguously studied word pairs. The existence of such long-range temporally defined associations lends further support to contextual-retrieval models of episodic association.