Proactive effects in memory for stories

Selective omissions in the recall of longer prose passages have been interpreted as evidence of abstractive processes during encoding. Presumably, the additional information in longer passages produces an information overload which necessitates selective attention. Learners in three experiments were tested on their recognition or recall of a short passage that either was or was not preceded by a long introductory segment. An encoding-based view predicts that increased passage length should diminish both recognition and recall. However, increased passage length decreased recall, but not recognition, demonstrating that passage length effects are dependent upon the type of cues available during retrieval. A further study demonstrated that ideas of greater thematic importance were recognized better than ideas of lesser thematic importance, even after a negligible retention interval. Abstractive processes deal with the relative importance of ideas but not the amount of information.