Describes 2 experiments, with 90 and 96 college students, respectively, to examine effects of stimulus complexity, association value, and amount of learning on recognition of random shapes. Results were evaluated using the area under the operating characteristic as the recognition measure. Both experiments indicated that increases in complexity and association value of stimuli resulted in poorer recognition performance. Increases in amount of learning in Exp. II improved recognition performance. Separate analyses of hit rate (HR) and false alarm rate (FAR) indicated that complexity affected only HR, learning affected both HR and FAR, and association value affected only FAR. An explanation of the association value effect, based on the retention and use of verbal traces in recognition is offered. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)