Palmer, for example, found that when participants are presented with a familiar word (e.g., apple) for a very brief period (100 milliseconds), they are able to identify the word itself ("was it apple?") better than its letters ("did it contain the letter L?"). Dissociated retrieval Similar to the principle of parallel storage, retrieval of verbatim and gist traces also occur via dissociated pathways. According to the principle of dissociated retrieval, recollective and nonrecollective retrieval processes are independent of each other. Consequently, this principle allows verbatim and gist processes to be differentially influenced by factors such as the type of retrieval cues and the availability of each form of representation. In connection with Tulving's encoding specificity principle, items that were actually presented in the past are better cues for verbatim traces than items that were not. Similarly, items that were not presented in the past but preserve the meaning of presented items are usually better cues for gist traces. Suppose, for example, that subjects of an experiment are presented with a word list containing several dog breeds, such as poodle, bulldog, greyhound, doberman, beagle, collie, boxer, mastif, husky, and terrier. During a recognition test, the words poodle, spaniel, and chair are presented. According to the principle of dissociated retrieval, retrieval of verbatim and gist traces does not depend on each other and, therefore, different types of test probes might serve as better cues to one type of trace than another. In this example, test probes such as poodle (targets, or studied items) will be better retrieval cues for verbatim traces than gist, whereas test probes such as spaniel (related distractors, non-studied items but related to targets) will be better retrieval cues for gist traces than verbatim. Chair, on the other hand, would neither be a better cue for verbatim traces nor for gist traces because it was not presented and is not related to dogs. If verbatim and gist processes were dependent, then factors that affect one process would also affect the other in the same direction. However, several experiments showing, for example, differential forgetting rates between memory for the surface details and memory for the bottom-line meaning of past events favor the notion of dissociated retrieval of verbatim and gist traces. In the case of forgetting rates, those experiments have shown that, over time, verbatim traces become inaccessible at a faster rate than gist traces. Brainerd, Reyna, and Kneer, for