A PARTIAL MATCHING THEORY OF THE MIRROR EFFECT IN IMMEDIATE PROBED RECOGNITION

A set of experiments on immediate probed recognition of digit triples is reported in which the variables were list length (five, six, seven, or eight triples), the probability that a probe was old (.33, .5, or .67), and whether the digit triples were presented with an auditory co mponent or articulatory suppression. Previous work had suggested that the false alarm (FA) rate in this paradigm was lower when auditory inf ormation was available than when it was not; this observation had led to the development of the partial matching theory of immediate probed recognition, according to which FAs could arise not only as a result o f unlucky guesses but also when new probes shared a first digit in com mon with a partially retained target triple. It was argued that partia l memory representations were less Likely following auditory presentat ion than following articulatory suppression. Partial matching theory i s contrasted with the rational response theory, according to which all FAs are unlucky guesses; partial matching theory gave abetter account of the present experimental data than did rational response theory. H owever, a logical relationship between the two theories was suggested, a consequence of which was that rational response theory could be mod ified to include partial matching in such a way as to account for mirr or effects, not only in unusually difficult immediate probed recogniti on tasks, but also in the more commonly studied mixed test List paradi gm involving words of high or low frequency.