EFFECTS OF TYPE OF INPUT AND TYPE OF PROCESSING ON RECALL HYPERMNESIA

Twenty undergraduates participated in one of six conditions representi ng two types of input (words, pictures) and three types of initial pro cessing: imagery (generate object imagery or real-world imagery), sema ntic (rate pleasantness or form a verbal association), and physical (r ate complexity or judge the presence of a feature). After viewing 70 i tems, subjects attempted to recall them four times. Except for physica l processing of words, the number of items correctly recalled improved over trials, demonstrating hypermnesia. Intrusions increased over tri als in most conditions and appeared later within a trial for words tha n for pictures. Of five alternative accounts of hypermnesia, these res ults favour the sensory/semantic model of memory coding.