Switching between chewing-gum and no-gum at learning and retrieval does not accentuate error production in free recall.

Abstract

Three experiments compared chewing gum to a no gum condition to examine further the finding (Anderson, Berry, Morse & Diotte, 2005) that switching flavour between learning and recall encourages error production independently of free recall. In order to encourage error production, participants in Experiment 1 were told to guess responses at recall, participants in Experiment 2 were required to recall categorised word lists and in Experiment 3 participants repeated the same learning-recall combination on four immediately successive occasions and were required to recall different categorised word lists on each. The experiments produced universally null effects. Consistent with previous research, for correct recall, there were no independent effects of chewing gum for learning or recall and nor was their evidence of context dependency. Error production was not biased towards the inconsistent learning-recall contexts even when participants switched successively between the learning-recall contexts. Finally, there was no evidence that extended temporal exposure to chewing gum was an important determinant of context-dependent memory effects.