ITEM AND RELATIONAL INFORMATION - CASE FOR CONTEXT INDEPENDENT RETRIEVAL

The probability of recognizing a member of a word pair tested with the pair intact was shown to equal the probability of recognizing a single word plus the probability of recalling an unrecognized word. A reanalysis of earlier results (Humphreys, Memory and Cognition, 1976, 4, 221-232) showed that the probability of failing to recognize both words in an intact study pair was not less than the probability of failing to recognize the two words in a rearranged pair. A second experiment confirmed this finding. These results support the hypothesis that two types of information (item and relational) underlie these recognition judgments. They also support assumptions about the retrieval processes being independent of context. © 1978 Academic Press, Inc.