In this study, the authors examined the influence of prior knowledge activation on information processing by means of a prior knowledge activation procedure adopted from the read-generate paradigm. On the basis of cue-target pairs, participants in the experimental groups generated two different sets of items before studying a relevant list. Subsequently, participants were informed that they had...

The present study investigated the effects of modality presentation on the verbal learning performance of 26 older adults and 26 younger cohorts. A multitrial free-recall paradigm was implemented incorporating three modalities: Auditory, Visual, and simultaneous Auditory plus Visual. Older subjects learned fewer words than younger subjects but their rate of learning was similar to that of the y...

Two experiments (modeled after J. Deese's 1959 study) revealed remarkable levels of false recall and false recognition in a list learning paradigm. In Experiment 1, subjects studied lists of 12 words (e.g., bed, rest, awake); each list was composed of associates of 1 nonpresented word (e.g., sleep). On immediate free recall tests, the nonpresented associates were recalled 40% of the time and we...