The Effects of Word Frequency and Context on Different Types of Memory: Evidence from Recognition Memory Test, Cued Recall Test, and Free Recall Test

The study investigated the effects of word frequency and context on the memory in recognition memory task (Experiment 1), cued recall task (Experiment 2) and free recall task (Experiment 3). The results showed that in Experiment 1 there was no significant main effect of word frequency in accuracy and reaction time analyses, but the performance for low context words was better than that for high context words. In Experiment 2, low-context target words were recalled better than high-context target words, and similar result pattern was obtained in cued recall task. Low-frequency target words, but not the low-frequency cues, were more effective than the high-frequency target words. In Experiment 3, the accuracy of low context words was higher than high-context words, while the accuracy of high-frequency words was higher than low-frequency ones. Moreover, the effect of context on memory was strongest in cued recall task, free recall task is the next, and recognition task is the weakest. The result revealed that the effects of word frequency and context vary across as the function of memory types.