Graduation Year

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Granting Department

Psychology

Major Professor

Douglas Nelson, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Cathy McEvoy, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Doug Rohrer, Ph.D.

Keywords

human memory, cognition, cued recall, word associations, cue effects

Abstract

Processing Implicit and Explicit Representations (PIER2) is a model of memory that makes predictions about memory performance based on the interaction of known and newly acquired information by studying how implicitly activated associates affect episodic memory. Nelson and Zhang (2000) found a significant effect of cue connectivity in a multiple regression analysis of the variables known to affect cued recall, but at that time no manipulational experiments had studied the cue connectivity effect in the laboratory. The present paper presents a series of three experiments designed to investigate the effect of cue connectivity in the context of the PIER2 memory model to determine the importance of this variable in the prediction of cued recall. Results of the experiments were inconsistent, and a revised regression analysis performed on an updated version of Nelson and Zhang's (2000) cued recall database indicated that cue connectivity was no longer a significant predictor of cued recall performance. It was concluded that PIER2's equations do not need to be modified to include the influence of retrieval cue attributes.

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