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Unannounced memory tests are not necessarily unexpected by participants: test expectation and its consequences in the repeated test paradigm

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Abstract

In memory research, many paradigms take advantage of repeated testing. One phenomenon that is revealed through this procedure is hypermnesia, a net increase in memory performance over repeated tests. While this effect is robustly found, a consensus about the underlying mechanism is still pending. This paper investigates whether test expectancy may have contributed to this circumstance. The present research demonstrates that it may not be assumed that unannounced memory tests come as a surprise to participants. Based on the violation of fundamental conversational norms as well as the informative function of experimental procedures, systematic discrepancies between participants’ expectations and experimenters’ announcements may occur. Following identical instructions, test expectancy was shown to be a function of the experimental procedure (Exp. 1). Anticipation of an additional memory test did not affect hypermnesia; however, it did affect item fluctuation: Those participants who expected (vs. did not expect) another test showed reduced forgetting and—at the same time—reduced reminiscence (Exp. 2a and b). Consequently, our results show that test expectation does affect memory performance. It remains open, however, why this effect occurs and whether this generalizes to other research paradigms that apply “surprise” recall tests, which may not truly be surprises.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Note that the dominant approach in hypermnesia research is the within-subjects’ design in which participants are asked multiple times for their memories (see Roediger and Payne 1982; Shapiro and Erdelyi 1974 for exceptions). Our rationale is largely based on this procedure. However, rehearsal might play a role in the between-subjects’ design as well.

  2. The objects chosen from the list were: monkey, ashtray, eye, car, tree, flower, letter, glasses, book, dragon, flag, glass, bell, hand, house, trousers, hedgehog, comb, candle, cherry, light bulb, trunk, cake, dress, mask, knife, pipe, mushroom, gun, puzzle, scissors, ship, umbrella, crumpet, key, sledge, snowman, socks, star, bag, cup, telephone, table, scale, cloud, tongs, tent, onion.

  3. To make sure our statistics were not biased by unequal cell sizes, we retrieved a random subset of 16 participants from the two-test condition as well as the three-tests-different-filler task condition. The analyses yielded the same results, however, with almost identical effect sizes. This was also true for the recall data.

  4. One participant did not provide any recollections; another was excluded due to an extraordinary low first recall performance (3 items) and an extraordinary high increase to test 2 (17 items), which therefore constituted an outlier.

  5. Please note that an analysis of the sub-processes (reminiscence, forgetting) did not yield any significant effects of condition or interactions with condition, either, Fs < 1.5.

  6. Note that the same pattern of results emerged when changes in memory performance were analyzed only with regard to recall tests 2 and 3, which is the critical time interval given that the experimental manipulation occurred only at the end of recall test 2.

  7. Fractional degrees of freedom result from Greenhouse-Geisser correction.

  8. Separate analyses of reminiscence and forgetting yielded no significant effects of condition or interactions with condition, either, Fs < 1.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by Grant Number GRK 772 by the German Research Foundation. We are indebted to Moritz Happel for his invaluable support in data collection and preparation and Ann Moore for proofreading the manuscript. Moreover, we are grateful to Steffen Nestler, Dan Burns, Matthew Erdelyi and one anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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  1. Knowledge Media Research Center, Schleichstr. 6, 72076, Tuebingen, Germany

    Aileen Oeberst

  2. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Isabel Lindner

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  1. Aileen Oeberst
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  2. Isabel Lindner
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Correspondence to Aileen Oeberst.

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Oeberst, A., Lindner, I. Unannounced memory tests are not necessarily unexpected by participants: test expectation and its consequences in the repeated test paradigm. Cogn Process 16, 269–278 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0663-3

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