Rohrer D, Wixted J T
Department of Psychology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla 92093.
Mem Cognit. 1994 Sep;22(5):511-24. doi: 10.3758/bf03198390.
In four experiments, subjects freely recalled previously studied items while a voice key and computer recorded each item's recall latency relative to the onset of the recall period. The measures of recall probability and mean recall latency were shown to be empirically independent, demonstrating that there exists no a priori relationship between the two. In all four experiments, latency distributions were fit well by the ex-Gaussian, suggesting that retrieval includes a brief normally distributed initiation stage followed by a longer exponentially distributed search stage. Further, the variation in mean latency stemmed from the variation in the duration of the search stage, not the initiation stage. Interresponse times (IRTs), the time elapsed between two successive item recalls, were analyzed as well. The growth of mean IRTs, plotted as a function of output position, was shown to be a simple function of the number of items not yet recalled. Finally, the mathematical nature of both free recall latency and IRT growth are shown to be consistent with a simple theoretical account of retrieval that depicts mean recall latency as a measure of the breadth of search.
在四项实验中，受试者自由回忆之前学习过的项目，同时语音键和计算机记录每个项目相对于回忆期开始的回忆潜伏期。回忆概率和平均回忆潜伏期的测量结果在经验上是独立的，这表明两者之间不存在先验关系。在所有四项实验中，潜伏期分布都能很好地用前高斯分布拟合，这表明检索包括一个短暂的正态分布启动阶段，随后是一个较长的指数分布搜索阶段。此外，平均潜伏期的变化源于搜索阶段持续时间的变化，而不是启动阶段。还分析了相继两次项目回忆之间的间隔时间（IRT），即两次连续项目回忆之间经过的时间。平均IRT作为输出位置的函数绘制的增长情况，显示为尚未回忆项目数量的简单函数。最后，自由回忆潜伏期和IRT增长的数学性质都与一种简单的检索理论解释一致，该解释将平均回忆潜伏期描述为搜索广度的一种度量。
