Remembering you read “doctoral dissertation”: Phrase frequency effects in recall and recognition memory

Speakers understand and produce common words like cat more easily than less common words like panther. Similarly, this pattern of behavior shows up at larger levels, processing common combinations of words like alcoholic beverages more quickly than less common ones like psychic nephew. As a result, many researchers have concluded that these combinations of words have word-like representations in long-term memory as a way of explaining how both words and phrases can be easier to process the more common they are. This dissertation challenges these assumptions by using episodic memory tasks such as yes-no recognition and immediate free recall of combinations of words, under the premise that word-like representations for phrases should lead to word-like patterns of episodic memory. The results and a corresponding verbal model demonstrate that combinations of words are processed more easily not because phrases have the same structures as words, but because of the strength of association between the two words within a phrase, which leads to facilitated processing.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Jacobs, Cassandra L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dell, Gary S.
• Federmeier, Kara
• Benjamin, Aaron S.
• Sahakyan, Lili
• Fisher, Cynthia

• Phrase frequency
• Recognition memory
• Recall
• Multiword expressions

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Cassandra Jacobs

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97364

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97364