The effect of repeated tests on recognition memory for pictures and words

Abstract

To determine whether the advantage of picture memory over word memory would be maintained over repeated tests with the same material, eight subjects participated in six sessions of a recognition memory experiment. In each session after the first, half of the studied items and half of the lures from the previous session were switched to the opposite category. Recognition memory, whether measured by hits, false alarms, A′, or confidence ratings, remained at a constant high level across the six sessions, and pictures maintained their advantage over words. There was a small sequential advantage of maintaining an item in the same category from one session to the next, but this was only reliable for new items. We concluded that the advantage of pictures over words in memory is not because of their novelty, and that situational familiarity of the type manipulated here does not appear to operate analogously to naturally occurring familiarity.