Familiarity and Word Recognition

Abstract

Word recognition was examined for physics and non-physics students after a single visual presentation of a series of sixty words. Physics words likely to be familiar only to physics subjects were used to vary the prior familiarity of the two groups with the inspection material and the ratio of physics to common words (salience) was varied for each of the three inspection series. Common words, which were expected to have greater salience than physics words in one of the inspection series, were not found to be recognized better than the control pairings of physics words by either group of subjects. The absence of differences between physics and non-physics students in the number of inspection list words (positive instances) correctly identified supports the view that prior familiarity is not a critical variable when all inspection items are presented in a recognition test. Physics students made fewer errors than non-physics students in identifying both physics and common words in the the recognition test which were not in an inspection series (negative instances). It is suggested that the correct identification of negative instances involves a scanning of a subject's “internal store” of previously experienced inspection items and that this is more efficient when the meaning of all the items in this “store” is known.