effect of caption meaning on memory for nonsense figures.pdf

Effect of Caption Meaning on Memory for Nonsense Figures

CECILE B. McANINCH University of Kentucky

JOY L. AUSTIN, AND PETER L. DERKS College of William and Mary

Recognition and recall of simple nonsense figures were investigated. Five different relations between captions and figures were tested: no caption, physically descriptive, abstract, meaningful, and humorous. Thirty nonsense figures were presented with captions of a particular relation followed by an additional 30 figures that required the subjects to generate the same type of captions. Following distraction, the subjects attempted to recall and draw all 60 figures. Fifteen of the first thirty figures that had supplied captions were then tested for recognition without their captions. Recall of figures with supplied humorous captions was best and abstract captions resulted in poorest recall. For generated captions, meaningful and no caption conditions were best recalled and descriptive captions were worst. This interaction between source of caption and type of meaning indicates that certain information such as humor can be relatively more helpful if supplied than if generated. Recognition was better for recalled figures but without an interaction with caption meaning or error type. Thus, in the present study, the captions served as retrieval cues without significantly influencing memory for the figure itself.

A meaningful interpretation will improve memory for an otherwise ambiguous form (Wiseman & Neisser, 1974; Wiseman, MacLeod, & Lootsteen, 1985). One kind of meaningful organization of nonsense material is humor. Bower, Karlin, and Dueck (1975) used "droodles," nonsensical line drawings that may be interpreted with amus- ing captions, and found that memory for the figures was improved by those captions. The addition of irrelevant labels was no more effective on free recall than no label at all (Klatzky & Rafnel, 1976). Rafnel and Klatzky (1978) then used humorous, nonmeaningful, descriptive, and no captions to extend the general result that a humorous, meaningful caption would benefit recall and confidence in the recognition of semantically equivalent targets.

Nevertheless, equating humor and meaning may not be appropriate. The effect of humor on memory is neither simple nor consistent (Zillman & Bryant, 1983). Humor has been found to sometimes help, sometimes hinder, and sometimes have no effect on memory (Chapman & Crompton, 1978). Indeed when factors that contribute to humor, such as imagery and arousal, are manipulated independently of funniness, humor has been found to have very little exclusive effect on memory (Sagaria & Derks, 1985). Therefore, the role of humor, per se, in memory for form is still uncertain.

In recognition memory Rafnel and Klatzky (1978) found that a humorous caption

Current Psychology: Research & Reviews, Winter 1992-93, Vol. 11, No. 4, 315-323.

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enabled subjects to select semantically correct options. They were not, however, better at avoiding distractions with slight physical changes. These results demonstrated a link between recognition and recall where a meaningful code for recall would influence the semantic information employed in recognition. Such a result might supply a potential exception to the empirical law of recognition failure that indicates independence of recognition and recall (Tulving & Wiseman, 1975). Still, Rafnel and Klatzky's signal detection analysis did not show a clear link between a semantic code and a physical code. The relation between false alarms and correct responses (d') did not seem to be related to caption type. Nevertheless, an analysis of recognition errors both with and without correct recall still might indicate a change in the physical code as indicated in earlier research (Carmichael, Hogan, & Walter, 1932; Ranken, 1963).

Furthermore, the "meaningful" labels for the nonsense figures were developed to be funny (Price, 1972, 1973). Their role as mnemonics has only been tested indirectly in previously research. As an encoding device humor may supply a richer source of retrieval information than mere meaning. On the other hand, the additional task of decoding or generating a funny label may reduce the efficiency of storage and retrieval. Indeed, Rafnel and Klatzky's subjects had difficulty just generating meaningful and descriptive captions. Still, college students have demonstrated a talent for generating humor (Derks & Hervas, 1988). In order to examine the relative efficacy of meaning and humor as mnemonics for form, both supplied and generated labels should be examined.

Therefore, the present study examined two related issues. First, are some mnemonic codes more likely to engage recognition with recall in memory for form? It was hypothesized that meaning and humor would link semantic recognition and recall while less relevant coding would leave them independent. To emphasize this linkage, recognition was tested after recall.

Second, can meaning and humor serve effectively as generated mnemonics for nonsense forms? The depth of analysis rational applied to the earlier studies clearly pre- dicts an advantage for humor in memory. A more meaningful description of a figure would lack the problem solving necessary to make the caption humorous as well. On the other hand, such problem solving could also serve as a distraction and reduce effective encoding. In any case, both humor and meaning should result in better memory than a physical description or an abstract (i.e. unrelated, meaningful) caption. Finally, the no caption condition was included as an indication of how the subjects would generate captions on their own.

The present generation task does not coincide with the generation effect delineated by Slamecka and Graf (1978) and especially Peynircio~lu (1989). The subjects in this study were generating cues to recall, not the items to be recalled. Nevertheless, the results are relevant for the theory of data driven vs. conceptually driven information processing investigated by Pring, Freestone, and Katan (1990). They used blind and sighted children in an attempt to manipulate the use of sensation or conception in the development of a memory code. The present study supplied different kinds of stimulus consistent information or required the participants to supply their own description of

McA ninch, Austin, and Derks 317

the stimulus. A difference between the two procedures in memory would demonstrate a relative effect, detrimental or advantageous, of cognitive involvement in a perceptual task.

Recent studies by Marks (1989, 1991) have demonstrated such an advantage. His approach relied on incidental learning while the present study was more nearly fo- cused on explicit memory. The theoretical implication of these experiments, and the present study, was for interpreting memory for form through the depth of processing approach of Craik (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975). Thus the present study has theoretical implications both for memory for form and for humor as a mnemonic.

METHOD

Subjects

Ninety-three Introductory Psychology students were subjects after being recruited to serve in a study of "memory for form." They received credit toward their participation requirement and were tested by condition in groups of 17 to 20.

Materials

Sixty nonsense drawings were taken from Price (1972, 1973), Wallach and Kogan (1965), and created by the authors. Given the variety of sources, this sample should be representative of nonsense figures in general. Humorous captions were used where available or were created in the spirit of droodles. Meaningful captions were developed by generating several possible descriptions of each picture and selecting the least funny. The selection of the meaningful captions and evaluation of the created humorous captions were based on ratings by 25 Introductory Psychology students recruited in the same way and from the same population as the subjects in the memory part of the experiment. On a scale from 1 (low) to 7 (high) the final set of meaningful captions was rated an average of 5.02 (SD = .79) on meaning and 1.90 (SD = .50) for humor. The averages for humorous captions were 4.31 (SD= .54) on meaning and 4.01 (SD = .91) on humor.

The descriptive captions used numerical, spatial, and geometric terms to describe the pictures as simply and accurately as possible. The abstract captions were book titles, metaphors, and clich6s assigned to the pictures at random. The pictures were also presented without captions. Thus there were five caption conditions; humorous, meaningful, descriptive, abstract, and none.

The stimuli were presented to the subjects in two booklets. The first contained 30 pictures with captions appropriate to the experimental condition. The second was composed of pictures without captions so that the subjects could generate their own. Each booklet contained a different random order of the stimuli.

Recognition was tested with a third booklet that contained fifteen of the first thirty stimuli. The final thirty stimuli with generated captions were not tested, as there was


no control of how the captions would relate to the stimuli. Each page included the correct target and five distractor items. The distractors were mirror images (either horizontal or vertical) of the correct stimulus, physical changes, semantic changes, and their mirror images. The physical changes were essentially minor, specific additions to the original figure. The semantic changes were more global modifications of the organization of the stimulus that retained the elements of the original. In short, the distractor items followed the lead of Rafnel and Klatzky (1978) while introducing additional mirror image conditions. A preliminary study with the same materials and humorous, descriptive, and randomly assigned humorous captions replicated their results of humorous captions showing best recognition and fewest semantic errors (McAninch, 1989).

Procedure

Subjects were presented with the first booklet and asked to examine each page until the experimenter said "turn," then move on to the next page. The study time per page was 10 seconds. After the first book was completed, the second book was distributed. The subjects were instructed to generate a phrase, similar in type to the phrases they had just seen in the first book. The no caption group was told to make "notes on the figure." The captions were written on a page separate from the book. Thirty seconds were necessary but usually sufficient for this task. Nevertheless, sometimes captions could not be generated and pages stuck together or were lost. Stimuli not completed for each condition averaged; none=0.89, descriptive=l.15, abstract=2.00, meaningful=l.06, and humorous=l.70. Thus the abstract condition was most difficult but not significantly so, F(4, 88) = 1.36, p=.25.

In order to prevent additional rehearsal the subjects were given a page of anagrams to decode. They worked on these for three minutes. Then the anagrams were collected and the subjects were given blank paper and asked to draw as many figures from both books as they could. They were told that these drawings did not have to be perfect and they should just draw what they could remember. Fifteen minutes for recall allowed the subjects to exhaust retrieval.

Finally, the subjects were given the recognition booklets and an answer sheet to identify the original picture they had seen out of the six recognition items for each of the 15 stimuli tested. There were two forms of these booklets with different orders.

RESULTS

Recall: Supplied Captions

The recall of the stimuli was all or none. All the reproductions from the subjects could be matched with one of the original stimuli with no possible confusions. The scores are presented as proportion correct to be equivalent to recall for generated captions. Proportions correct according to condition are presented in Table 1.

Pictures with humorous captions were recalled best and those with abstract captions

McA ninch, Austin, and Derks 319

TABLEI Proportion Recalled ~rCaptionsSuppliedand Generated

None Descriptive Abstract Meaningful Humorous

Supplied .282 .297 .208 .330 .398

Generated .676 .437 .470 .667 .610

were recalled worst, F(4 ' 8s)=6.14, MSe=.OI 4, p


between recall with supplied or generated captions was significant, F(4,88)=4.36, MSe=.022, p

McAninch, Austin, and Derks 321

TABLE2 Propo~ion RecognitionErrors(RE)WhenItems WereRecalled(R) orNot(N)

Error Caption Type

None Descriptive Abstract Meaningful Humorous

Mirror

R .114

N .141

Physical

R .044

N .065

Physical Mirror

R .019

N .014

Semantic

R .015

N .047

Semantic Mirror

R .025

N .033

RE/R+N .311

.123 .105 .084 .071

.121 .128 .146 .077

.113 .074 .091 .048

.i00 .114 .095 .090

.0 .0 .0 .010

.016 .017 .005 .027

.060 .029 .073 .030

.045 .103 .038 .024

.0 .048 .028 .013

.025 .058 .027 .018

.300 .365 .296 .210


As for recognition, the process was quite robust relative to caption type. Recognition failures did occur but the recognition of unrecalled items demonstrated the presence of some physical code for the nonsense figures even in the absence of effective retrieval. Richardson-Klavehn and Bjork (1988) have pointed out the inherent difficulties in testing the independence of recognition and recall when the same subject is tested on the same item. Furthermore, the present study tested recognition after recall to try to link the captions more directly with the figures. The presence of relatively more recognition failures for unrecalled items over recalled items does not indicate an exception to the empirical findings of recognition-recall independence, especially since the distribution of recognition failures was not significantly different by caption types.

Apparently the physical codes of elements and their relations were registered without being greatly influenced by the label used for retrieval. MacLeod (1986), also using droodles, found that the figures and the labels could be presented at different times and still matched. Thus considerable imaginal information can be encoded and used without an explicit label. Such "non-thematic pictorial detail" has a significant role in memory for form (Homa & Viera, 1988; Mandler & Johnson, 1976). Perhaps this item-specific information is registered automatically (Hasher and Zachs, 1979). Consequently, covert rehearsal would have little effect. Indeed, it has long been known that recognition memory for form is much less influenced, if affected at all, by labels than is recall (Bahrick & Boucher, 1968; Riley, 1962). Nevertheless, humorous captions did result in fewer recognition errors than no captions. All other caption types produced more recognition errors. Although not significant in this study, the effect does warrant further examination for its implications to theories of data or concept-driven recognition.

In summary, recall accompanied improved recognition without shifting error type. Recall, on the other hand, was influenced by meaning and source of caption. Humorous captions were not the same as meaningful captions, aiding recall more when supplied and somewhat less when generated.

NOTES

We thank W. Larry Ventis for valuable suggestions about this research and for his aid in the creation of captions.

Date of acceptance for publication: August 27, 199l. Correspondence should be addressed to Peter Derks, Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185.

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effect of caption meaning on memory for nonsense figures.pdf

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