The effect of information content distributions on word recollection and familiarity

Abstract This study builds on work on language processing and information theory which suggests that informationally uniform, or smoother, sequences are easier to process than ones in which information arrives in clumps. Because episodic memory is a form of memory in which information is encoded within its surrounding context, we predicted that episodic memory in particular would be sensitive to information distribution. We used the “dual process” theory of recognition memory to separate the episodic memory component (recollection) from the non-episodic component (familiarity) of recognition memory. Though we find a weak effect in the predicted direction, this does not reach statistical significance and so the study does not support the hypothesis. The study does replicate a known effect from the literature where low frequency words are more easily recognized than high frequency ones when participants employ recollection-type memory. We suggest our results may be explained by linguistic processing being particularly adapted to processing linear sequences of information in a way that episodic memory is not. Episodic memory likely evolved to deal with unpredictable, sometimes clumped, information streams.