Figures & data
Figure 1. Retrieval Practice Paradigm. In the initial encoding phase, participants memorise cue – associate word pairs. Each cue has three negative and three neutral associates. During the retrieval practice phase, participants’ memory for a subset of the encoded items is probed. On each trial, participants are provided with the cue word plus a letter stem and have four seconds to retrieve the full associate from memory. In Experiment 1, participants were provided with a 1-letter stem. In Experiment 2 and the supplemental experiment, participants were provided with a 2-letter stem as shown here to facilitate self-monitoring of performance. During the final test, recall for all original items is tested. Not depicted in this figure is the visuospatial distracter task in the interval between retrieval practice and test and the final rating phase.
Table 1. Performance from Retrieval Practice Phase of Experiment 1. Means (standard deviations). Accuracy rates and response times (seconds) from the first, second, and third retrieval attempts during the retrieval practice phase.
Figure 2. Free recall performance for Experiments 1 (Panel A) and 2 (Panel B). Note that in Experiment 2, for cues in the Neutral/Negative condition, RP+ items were always neutral and RP− items were always negative. Analyses in Experiment 1 revealed a main effect of emotion, with negative items recalled more frequently than neutral items. In both Experiments 1 and 2, recall rates on the final test indicated significant enhancement effects for practiced items (RP+) and retrieval-induced forgetting of unpracticed competitors (RP−) regardless of their affective salience.
Table 2. Performance from Retrieval Practice Phase of Experiment 2. Means (standard deviations). Accuracy rates and response times (seconds) from the first, second, and third retrieval attempts during the retrieval practice phase.