The revelation that the revelation effect is not due to revelation.
The revelation effect is the tendency to call an item on a recognition test "old" if it is preceded by a different task interpolated between study and test. Seven experiments explored the generality of the revelation effect across a number of interpolated tasks. A revelation effect emerged when a variety of tasks preceded recognition test items; the effect was found for test items that followed a memory-span task, a synonym-generation task, and a letter-counting task. The compatibility between the test stimuli and the stimuli that composed the interpolated task was found to be a critical factor. With words as stimuli on a recognition test, a revelation effect was found when the stimuli in the interpolated task were words and letters. However, when numbers were the stimuli in the interpolated task, no revelation effect was found.
Westerman
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Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7123, USA. dlw5@po.cwru.edu
Greene
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D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning