When lust is lost: Orthographic similarity effects in the encoding and reconstruction of rapidly presented word lists

A reconstructive account of memory is presented to explain the finding that report of a word (C2) appearing in a rapidly presented list is reduced whe n it is orthographically similar to an earlier word (C1) in the list. By th is account, the effect arises when the list is reconstructed from memory, n ot at the time of list presentation as proposed by accounts based on failur e of encoding or tokenization. The reconstructive account is supported by a series of experiments that show a retroactive effect in which report of C1 is enhanced by similarity to C2; a nonword CI can either interfere with or enhance report of C2, depending on how accurately C1 is encoded; manipulat ion of reconstructive processes can eliminate or enhance the effect of orth ographic similarity; and a bidirectional trade-off in the report of an orth ographically similar C1-C2 pair, whereby report of one member compromises r eport of the other.