The ranschburg effect: Repetition and guessing factors in short-term memory

The Ranschburg effect—poorer recall of repeated items in a short sequence—was interpreted as being primarily the result of a restricted guessing strategy that excludes repetitions of remembered items as possible responses. Experimental evidence supporting the guessing interpretation was reviewed and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 1973-01, Vol.12 (1), p.64-75
Main Authors: Hinrichs, James V., Mewaldt, Steven P., Redding, Janet
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The Ranschburg effect—poorer recall of repeated items in a short sequence—was interpreted as being primarily the result of a restricted guessing strategy that excludes repetitions of remembered items as possible responses. Experimental evidence supporting the guessing interpretation was reviewed and the results of three experiments were reported. Experiment I showed that the Ranschburg effect decreased as the item set size increased and that the magnitude of the effect was dependent upon a performance increase on control (nonrepeated) items. Experiments II and III demonstrated that the guessing bias could be modified by situational experience. The Ranschburg effect appears to be attributable to a combination of two factors, failure to detect repetitions and application of an inappropriate guessing strategy.
ISSN:0022-5371
0749-596X
DOI:10.1016/S0022-5371(73)80061-1