Recognition Memory - Sans Forgetica

Recognition old-new experiment

We employed 188 words, 94 at study (47 in each script condition) and 188 at test (94 old and 94 new). This resulted in four counterbalanced lists. Lists were assigned to participants so that across participants each word occurred equally often in the four possible conditions: Arial-old, Arial-new, Sans Forgetica-old, Sans Forgetica-new.

Word order was completely randomized, such that Arial and Sans Forgetica words were randomly intermixed in the study phase, and Arial and Sans Forgetica old and new words were randomly intermixed in the test phase. All old words were presented at test in the same manner in which they were presented at study; that is, Arial words during study were presented in Arial font at test, and Sans Forgetica words during study were presented in Sans Forgetica font at test.

After reading and signing a consent form, participants first completed a study phase. During the study phase, a fixation cross appeared at the center of the screen for 500 ms. The fixation cross was immediately replaced by a word in the same location. To continue to the next trial, participants pressed the continue button at the bottom of the screen. Each trial was self-paced. After the study phase, a short 3-minute distractor task was administered in which participants wrote down as many United States capitals as they could. Afterward, participants took an old-new recognition test. At test, a word appeared in the center of the screen that either had been presented during study (“old”) or had not been presented during study (“new”). Old words occurred in their original script, and following the counterbalancing procedure, each new word was presented in Arial font or Sans Forgetica font. For each word presented, participants chosee from one of two boxes displayed on the screen: a box labeled “old” to indicate that they had named the word during study, and a box labeled “new” to indicate they did not remember naming the word. Words stayed on the screen until participants gave an “old” or “new” response. All words were individually randomized for each participant during both the study and test phases. After the experiment, participants were debriefed. The entire experiment took about 30 minutes to complete.

Gorilla Open Materials Attribution-NonCommerical Research-Only