The relationship between orienting tasks and the structure of memory traces--evidence from false recognition

This article reports two experiments in which the pattern of false recognition is examined following incidental learning involving either semantically or non-semantically oriented processing tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrates that more false recognitions were made to semantic as opposed to non-semantic distractors when the initial orientation was semantic whilst the reverse was found when initial orientation was non-semantic. Experiment 2 replicates this effect and, in addition, shows that false recognition rates to completely unrelated distractors were significantly lower than those made to distractors related to the unspecified dimension in both semantic and non-semantic orienting conditions. The results are seen as supporting the basic assertion of the levels of processing approach by demonstrating that tasks ostensibly addressed to different processing domains give rise to memory traces that differ qualitatively in structure. The results of Expt 2, however, suggest that orienting tasks do not wholly restrict processing to the dimension specified by their overt demands. The failure of some earlier studies to demonstrate a clear relationship between initial orienting task and the pattern of false recognition responses is attributed to methodological problems.