QUESTION-ANSWERING STRATEGIES AND CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE

To test the proposal that question-answering strategy is independent of the type of searched representation, an experiment was designed to demonstrate the application of two strategies, direct retrieval and plausibility judgment, to the same representation. Subjects judged whether or not concept pairs belonged to the same category. The distractor (“no”) items presented either similar (e.g., wren bee) or dissimilar (e.g., wren pea) concept pairs. Dissimilar different distractors should favor the plausibility strategy and result in relatively fast responses; whereas similar different distractors should require direct retrieval. The selected strategy was predicted to be extended to the same pairs, which were identical in the two conditions. Consistent with this analysis, “same” responses were faster in the dissimilar- different condition. Because all answers were based on conceptual knowledge, this outcome supports the proposal that answering strategy is independent of type of searched representation. © 1991, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.