Associative symmetry generalizes to asymmetric pairs

For pairs of words (A − B) in which both items are drawn from the same stimulus pool, cued recall accuracy in the for-ward direction (A →?) is, on average, equal to accuracy in the backward direction (? ← B). This led to Gestalt psychol-ogists suggesting that pairs are learned as holistic units rather than two separate forward and backward associations (Asch & Ebenholtz, 1962). Kahana (2002) pointed out that instead, di-rect evidence of holistic learning would be a near-perfect corre-lation between forward and backward probes of the same pair, which is mathematically independent of mean performance. We report that even when pairs are asymmetric in mean per-formance measures (pairing low-frequency words with high-frequency words), the forward–backward correlation remains high. Our findings force a re-evaluation of prior findings of asymmetries in heterogeneous pairs: namely, human partici-pants can learn asymmetric pairs as holistic, non-directional associations