Surface form typicality and asymmetric transfer in episodic memory for spoken words

A series of experiments was conducted to determine whether the typicality o f the surface form of speech would affect memory retention of spoken words. For each surface characteristic studied, a continuous-recognition-memory t ask was used in which listeners based recognition judgments on word identit y alone. For "typical" items, repetition benefits did not depend on whether the surface forms of the Ist and 2nd occurrences matched or mismatched. Fo r "atypical" items, a larger repetition benefit occurred when the surface f orms of the 2 occurrences matched. These results suggest that episodic memo ry for spoken words may be directly related to the perceived typicality of particular surface characteristics.