GENERALIZATION GRADIENTS IN RECOGNITION MEMORY OF VISUAL FORM - ROLE OF STIMULUS MEANING

/Tested the hypothesis that gradients of generalization in recognition memory are steeper for more meaningful stimuli. 10 undergraduate Ss were given various kinds of paired-associate (PA) practice in labeling random shapes, or in observing them, and then were given a 30-item recognition test consisting of both the shapes in the PA list and systematic distortions of these shapes along a dimension of similarity. Exp. I revealed that gradients of generalization were steeper for the more meaningful stimuli, where meaningfulness was defined in terms of association value (AV) of the shapes. Exp. II revealed an opposite effect when stimulus meaning was defined as associative frequency (AF); high-AF stimuli yielded flatter and broader gradients of generalization. An encoding-variability interpretation was proposed to account for differences in slopes of the gradients. It was suggested that the percentage of Ss having an association to a stimulus (AV) and the number of associations a stimulus elicits (AF), although commonly regarded as reflecting correlated events, be viewed as contributing to the storage and/or retrieval of visual information in different ways. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.