Determinants of word fragment completion

Scand J Psychol. 1995 Mar;36(1):59-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1995.tb00968.x.

Abstract

A current debate in the memory literature concerns the validity of word fragment completion (WFC) as a test of implicit memory. It has been claimed that language variables exert a strong influence on the task, and that the task reflects memory only to a small extent (Hintzman & Hartry, 1990). For these reasons, the use of contingency analyses of recognition and WFC performance as a means of studying underlying memory processes has been criticized. The present study addressed this issue by examining the influence of language variables on completion of a set of computer generated single-solution fragments of Swedish words (Olofsson & Nyberg, 1992). It was found that language variables indeed had a large effect on completion performance, and that priming only accounted for a small portion of variance in the task. It is therefore suggested that the method of triangulation should be employed for contingency analyses involving WFC.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Attention*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Recall*
  • Middle Aged
  • Paired-Associate Learning*
  • Problem Solving*
  • Semantics*