Research article summary (published 30 Mar 1999):

Regular versus randomized sentences, nouns versus prepositions, and assimilation in salience.

Full Abstract

The authors' research supports an alternative to the theory that organization improves retention by producing fewer elements for processing. College students' recall of randomized words was better for nouns than for prepositions. Regular sentences improved recall, but this improvement was less for nouns than for prepositions. According to the alternative theory, a part assimilates (increases in similarity) to its high-in-salience organization-produced group, thus increases in salience, and hence is retained better. The high-in-salience group for a regular sentence should be the sentence's meaning. Because the nouns were recalled better, they were more similar in salience to the regular sentences' meanings than were the prepositions. Assimilation should be minimal when parts are very similar. Therefore, the nouns' assimilation in salience should have been less than the prepositions', explaining the nouns' less improvement in recall.

Author information

Author/s: King, D L (DL); Normington, J (J);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Howard University, Washington, DC 20059, USA. donlking(-atsign-)erols.com

Grants: MH16580 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: The Journal of general psychology (J Gen Psychol), published in UNITED STATES. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1999-Apr; vol 126 (issue 2) : pp 177-83

Dates: Created 1999/07/08; Completed 1999/07/08; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 10368943, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent Adult Analysis of Variance Cognitive Science Humans

Humans Mental Recall Psychological Theory Reading Retention (Psychology)

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