Procedure
The following experimental procedures were conducted separately for two
groups of 15 and 14 participants, and the second experiment was
conducted two weeks after the first experiment.
Study phase. Each participant was given a booklet and explained
that the task was to remember one word from each word pair.
Subsequently, the task was explained by showing a slide corresponding to
each choice condition. The following instructions were provided to each
participant.
A familiar Kanji word pair was shown in the middle of each page. For
pages corresponding to the self-choice condition, below the word pairs,
a question was presented: “Which (of words) do you like better?” in
the pleasant criterion, or “Which (of words) do you dislike more?” in
unpleasant criterion. For each page like this (corresponding to the
self-choice condition), their task was to select one word more pleasant
(the word you like better) or unpleasant (the word you dislike more) and
to remember it for each pair. For the pages corresponding to the
forced-choice condition, a word was underlined, and a question
concerning it was presented; ”Do you like this word?” in the
pleasantness criterion, or ”Do you dislike this word?” in the
unpleasantness criterion.
Examples of these pages are shown in Figure 1. Each participant was also
instructed as follows: “As I said before, for each page like this
(corresponding to the self-choice condition), your task is to select one
word by circling it that is more pleasant or unpleasant and to remember
it for each pair. For each slide like this (corresponding to the
forced-choice condition), your task is to remember the underlined word
while answering the presented question about underlined word by circling
”Yes” or ”No.” Later, each participant was provided five seconds to
remember one word on each page. The experimenter sent a signal ”Next
page” every five seconds before moving to the next page. Following the
signal, the participants turned the page and remembered the chosen or
underlined words.
Free recall test. Following the learning phase, the participants
were required to recall and write as many words as possible (the chosen
or not chosen in the self-choice condition and the underlined or not
underlined words in the forced-choice condition). Three minutes were
allowed for this test.
Self-choice Condition
Pleasant–Neutral Pairs
Pleasantness Criterion Unpleasantness Criterion