Beyond category sorting and pleasantness rating: Inducing relational and item-specific processing

Abstract

In most studies of relational and item-specific processing, category sorting and pleasantness rating have been the main procedures used to induce these two types of processing. Because the two types of processing have been studied in a wide range of memory phenomena (Hunt and McDaniel, 1993), it is strange that other tasks have not been proposed and tested. The present experiment demonstrates that equivalent results can be obtained with three relational processing tasks (category sorting, narrative construction, anti relational imagery) anti equivalent results with three item-specific processing tasks (pleasantness ratings, familiarity ratings, and single imagery).