Memory as affected by isolation of material and by repetition

Abstract

The experiment reported here is a modification of Strong's four-dummy experiment. Instead of advertisements, familiar four-letter words were presented in differing sizes of space and at differing frequencies. A group of 50 men and 50 women acted as subjects. Summarizing, it was found that: (1) isolation of a single word upon a page gives it no greater recognition value than is obtained for two or four words to the page; (2) repetition is effective, but when we contrast originals with an original plus one or more repetitions, we find that repetition has an inhibitive effect, amounting to about 40% for one repetition, 57% for one repetitions, and 64% for three repetitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)