Recognition versus Recall as Measures of Television Commercial Forgetting

Abstract

The authors report the second in a series of experiments on recognition as a dependent variable in the study of learning and forgetting of television commercials. They investigate the impact of time since exposure, commercial length, and commercial repetition on recognition and unaided recall scores. The results indicate that recognition scores are not indiscriminately high, as commonly is argued, and that they do decline with time, contrary to what often is assumed. The data, in fact, show that recognition scores are more sensitive and more discriminating than, and covary with, unaided recall scores. The evidence indicates they warrant more consideration by advertisers.