The revelation that the revelation effect is not due to revelation

Abstract

The revelation effect is the tendency to call an item on a recognition test "old" if it is preceded by a different task interpolated between study and test. Seven experiments explored the generality of the revelation effect across a number of interpolated tasks. A revelation effect emerged when a variety of tasks preceded recognition test items; the effect was found for test items that followed a memory-span task, a synonym-generation task, and a letter-counting task. The compatibility between the test stimuli and the stimuli that composed the interpolated task was found to be a critical factor. With words as stimuli on a recognition test, a revelation effect was found when the stimuli in the interpolated task were words and letters. However, when numbers were the stimuli in the interpolated task, no revelation effect was found.