Memory for Sentences: The Subject Superiority Effect
- 1 August 1981
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A
- Vol. 33 (3) , 295-307
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748108400794
Abstract
Three experiments are reported on subject noun superiority in cued recall from S-V-O sentences. In Experiment I surface subjects were superior cues across a wide variety of conditions when the order of nouns/pronouns was matched in sentences and probes. The effect was less clear-cut in Experiment II, when cues and responses were confined to single key words. The final experiment showed that cue superiority depends on the cue which subjects learn to use in retrieving information from sentences, and can be reversed by brief training. Several other aspects of the results, including a contrast in recall and recognition patterns, suggest that subject cue superiority results from the way subjects process remembered sentences rather than from memory trace structure. It is suggested that failure to control the utilisation of cues for memory retrieval may account for the sometimes elusive nature of the subject superiority effect.This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- On the comprehension of active and passive sentencesPublished by Elsevier ,2004
- Discussion of Wike and Church's commentsJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1976
- A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing.Psychological Review, 1975
- Retrieval of propositional information from long-term memoryCognitive Psychology, 1974
- Thematization and sentence retrievalJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1974
- The reconstructive process in sentence memoryJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1973
- Theme and imagery in the recall of active and passive sentencesJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972
- Redintegrative memory.Psychological Review, 1969
- Prompted recall of sentencesJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1967
- Promoted recall of sentencesJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1967