The Effects of Practice on Mnemonic Encodings Involving Prior Knowledge and Semantic Memory: Reply to Rickard and Bajic (2003)

T. C. Rickard and D. Bajic's (2003) finding of a transition to unmediated retrieval of paired associates after retrieval practice is reconciled with R. J. Crutcher and K. A. Ericsson's (2000) finding of a continued linkage to keyword mediators after extended retrieval of vocabulary pairs. The discrepant findings are attributed to differences between the respective paradigms. The task of learning a large number of Spanish-English pairs using mediators that rely on preexisting phonological similarity and semantic associations is contrasted to the task of memorizing a small number of arbitrarily paired color words and digits (e.g., GREEN-5 ) that rely on mediating associations (e.g., GREEN-F and F-5 ) learned in the same session. These qualitative differences in encoding between the studies are proposed to lead to differential consequences of continued practice.