Browsing by Author "Gibson, Janet Marie"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    An investigation into the decline in priming of word completion: A test of the number-of-completions hypothesis
    (1990) Gibson, Janet Marie; Watkins, Michael J.
    The prior presentation of a word enhances the probability that the word will be identified from a degraded cue. This enhancement, or priming, may occur without recollection of the prior presentation. In investigations of the effect of delay on nonrecollective memory, priming of word completion may occur at long delays after the initial word presentation (e.g., HORIZON) when the degraded cue contains scattered letters (e.g., R Z) but not when the degraded cue contains the initial letters (e.g., HOR$\underline{\qquad}).$ These particular cues are known as fragments and stems respectively. Priming of fragment completion may occur weeks after the study presentation whereas priming of stem completion may disappear within hours. The present research investigated this apparent discrepancy between the duration of priming effect for the two types of cues by examining completion of both within the same experiment. Particularly, it tested the hypothesis that the decline in priming of completion is greater when cues have many possible completions. Subjects completed fragments that have 1 completion or fragments and stems that have more than 7 completions. Priming was measured over a 48-hour delay interval in each of 4 experiments. Priming of stem completion declined at a greater rate than priming of fragment completion over the 48-hour interval, thus replicating within a single experiment the previous between-experiment findings. The number-of-completions hypothesis was not rejected in Experiments 1 and 3 because the decline in priming of multiple fragment completion did not differ from the decline in priming of stem or unique fragment completion. However, in Experiment 2 the decline in priming of multiple fragment completion differed from the decline in priming of stem completion but not from the decline in priming of unique fragment completion. Thus, the number-of-completions hypothesis may not be a viable explanation of the differential effect of delay on priming of fragment and stem completion. When the same words served in both the unique fragment and stem conditions, the effect of delay on priming of completion was similar for both conditions (Experiment 4).
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    PRIMING OF WORD FRAGMENT AND WORD STEM COMPLETION
    (1987) Gibson, Janet Marie
    Three experiments explored the extent to which word fragment completion and word stem completion could be "primed," or facilitated, by prior study of the words. In Experiment 1, the manner in which the words were studied beforehand had little effect on priming of either kind of completion, but delaying the test reduced the amount of priming. More importantly, priming of fragment completion decreased over the delay to a greater degree than priming of stem completion. In Experiment 2, this interaction was not replicated when both fragments and stems were constructed without controlling the number of possible completions and were placed in the same test. In a third experiment, the number of response alternatives did not affect priming of stem completion. It was concluded that differences in the amount of priming of fragment completion and stem completion cannot be easily explained by the number of response alternatives or by the task difficulty.