Just a reminder: Reminding influences understanding

Remindings have been shown to play an important role in concept learning, problem solving by analogy, and basic memory phenomena such as the spacing effect. However, little research has addressed their role in interpretation and understanding. The current experiment explores that possibility by testing whether reminding caused by semantic and contextual cues can bias the interpretation of homographs. Subjects were shown a list of words that included homographs and cue words related to a non-dominant meaning of each homograph. For each word, they wrote a sentence that was scored to assess how they interpreted the ambiguous homograph. In the same condition, the cue appeared several trials prior to the homograph, and they shared a common background image. In the different condition, the cue appeared before the homograph, but the two words were presented on different background images. The reverse condition, in which the cue appeared after the homograph, served as a baseline. The biasing effect of cue words, as revealed by a non-dominant interpretation of homographs, was higher in the same condition than in the different or reverse conditions. Additionally, non-dominant interpretation in the same condition was significantly higher when the background image was correctly recognized as having been previously seen. These findings suggest that remindings caused by a combination of semantic and visual cues can influence word interpretation and understanding more generally.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Braverman, Michael

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ross, Brian H.
• Benjamin, Aaron S.

• reminding
• explicit memory
• spacing effect
• study-phase retrieval
• understanding

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2012 Michael Braverman

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42244

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/42244