Sensory and meaning features in stimulus recognition and associative retrieval.

Three experiments addressed the problem of isolating the effects of sensory similarity on subprocesses involved in coding paired associates. In the first, the standard recognition-recall procedure was used and stimulus similarity, concreteness, and frequency were varied. However, because of concern with the validity of this recognition procedure as a measure of functional stimulus contact, an alternative was developed. This alternative led to the second study in which only stimulus similarity was manipulated. In the third experiment, similarity was varied, and the pairs were either associatively compatible, unrelated, or incompatible. The results using the new procedure indicated that similarity consistently disrupted functional stimulus contact but not associative retrieval. By contrast, associative relatedness facilitated both subprocesses.