This study investigated whether the encoding and retrieval of plurality information and letter-case information of words in recognition memory can be inhibited. Response-deadline experiments using single words have indicted a controlled processing mode, whereas studies using meaningful sentences have indicated an automatic mode of processing plurality information. Two similar opposing views have existed on the processing of letter-case information. The abstractionist view contends that we retain the abstract lexical information and discard the superficial perceptual case information. The proceduralist view holds (...) that perceptual details cannot be separated from the lexical information. Using an intentional and an attention-diverted learning procedure and instructions to ignore plurality and case, we found that subjects experienced a consistent interference effect of changed plurality from study to test but slightly less interference from changed case, suggesting strong automaticity for plurality, and comparatively less automaticity, for case processing. (shrink)

When subjects give higher confidence or memory ratings to a test word in a recognition test, do they simply raise their criterion without making better discrimination, or do they raise both criterion and true discrimination between the studied words and the lures? Given that previous studies found subjects’ false alarm responses to lures slower than to SW, and recognition latency inversely correlated with the confidence rating, can the latency difference between the lures and SW be accounted for by confidence or (...) memory ratings? The present results showed that when subjects gave higher confidence or memory ratings, both their bias and sensitivity were raised, indicating that they could consciously distinguish the lures from the SW. However, a latency difference between true and false recognitions persisted after confidence and memory ratings were held constant, suggesting an unconscious source of discrimination between the two types of memory. (shrink)

Cowan's concept of a pure short-term memory (STM) capacity limit is equivalent to that of memory subitizing. However, a robust phenomenon well known in the Sternberg paradigm, that is, the linear increase of RT as a function of memory set size is not consistent with this concept. Cowan's STM capacity theory will remain incomplete until it can account for this phenomenon.

The finding of a correlation between normative responses to judgment and reasoning questions and cognitive capacity measures (SAT score) suggests that the cause of the non-normative responses is computational in nature. This actually is consistent with the rational competence view. The implications of this finding for the adaptation view of cognition are discussed.