Independent effects of word concreteness and word valence on immediate serial recall

The present study examined the roles of word concreteness and word valence in the immediate serial recall task. Emotion words (e.g. happy) were used to investigate these effects. Participants completed study-test trials with 7-item study lists consisting of positive or negative words with either high or low concreteness (Experiments 1 and 2) and neutral (i.e. non-emotion) words with either high or low concreteness (Experiment 2). In serial recall performance, we replicated the typical item concreteness effect (concrete words are better recalled than abstract words) and obtained an item valence effect (positive/neutral words are better recalled than negative words). However, there was no concreteness × valence interaction. We conclude that both word valence and word concreteness independently contribute to the serial order retention of emotion words in the immediate serial recall task.     

The word concreteness effect occurs for positive,but not negative,emotion words in immediate serial recall

The present study examined the roles of word concreteness and word valence in the immediate serial recall task. Emotion words (e.g. happy) were used to investigate these effects. Participants completed study‐test trials with seven‐item study lists consisting of positive or negative words with either high or low concreteness (Experiments 1 and 2) and neutral (i.e. non‐emotion) words with either high or low concreteness (Experiment 2). For neutral words, the typical word concreteness effect (concrete words are better recalled than abstract words) was replicated. For emotion words, the effect occurred for positive words, but not for negative words. While the word concreteness effect was stronger for neutral words than for negative words, it was not different for the neutral words and the positive words. We conclude that both word valence and word concreteness simultaneously contribute to the item and order retention of emotion words and discuss how Hulme et al.'s (1997) item redintegration account can be modified to explain these findings.     

Testing the associative-link hypothesis in immediate serial recall: Evidence from word frequency and word imageability effects

Two immediate serial recall experiments were conducted to test the associative-link hypothesis (Stuart & Hulme, 2000). We manipulated interitem association by varying the intralist latent semantic analysis (LSA) cosines in our 7-item study word lists, each of which consists of high- or low-frequency words in Experiment 1 and high- or low-imageability words in Experiment 2. Whether item recall performance was scored by a serial-recall or free-recall criterion, we found main effects of interitem association, word imageability, and word frequency. The effect of interitem association also interacted with the word frequency effect, but not with the word imageability effect. The LSA-cosinexword frequency interaction occurred in the recency, but not primacy, portion of the serial position curve. The present findings set explanatory boundaries for the associative-link hypothesis and we argue that both item- and associative-based mechanisms are necessary to account for the word frequency effect in immediate serial recall.     

Testing the associative-link hypothesis in immediate serial recall: Evidence from word frequency and word imageability effects

Two immediate serial recall experiments were conducted to test the associative-link hypothesis (Stuart & Hulme, 2000 Stuart, G. and Hulme, C. 2000. The effects of word co-occurrence on short-term memory: Associative-links in long-term memory affect short-term memory performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26: 796–802. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We manipulated interitem association by varying the intralist latent semantic analysis (LSA) cosines in our 7-item study word lists, each of which consists of high- or low-frequency words in Experiment 1 and high- or low-imageability words in Experiment 2. Whether item recall performance was scored by a serial-recall or free-recall criterion, we found main effects of interitem association, word imageability, and word frequency. The effect of interitem association also interacted with the word frequency effect, but not with the word imageability effect. The LSA-cosine×word frequency interaction occurred in the recency, but not primacy, portion of the serial position curve. The present findings set explanatory boundaries for the associative-link hypothesis and we argue that both item- and associative-based mechanisms are necessary to account for the word frequency effect in immediate serial recall.     

Rehearsal in immediate serial recall

We report for the first time overt rehearsal data in immediate serial recall (ISR) undertaken at three presentation rates (1, 2.5, and 5 sec/word). Two groups of participants saw lists of six words for ISR and were required either to engage in overt rehearsal or to remain silent after reading aloud the word list during its presentation. Typical ISR serial position effects were obtained for both groups, and recall increased with slower rates. When participants rehearsed, they tended to do so in a cumulative forward order up to Serial Position 4, after which the amount of rehearsal decreased substantially. There were similarities between rehearsal and recall data: Both broke down toward the end of longer sequences, and there were strong positive correlations between the maximum sequence of participants' rehearsals and their ISR performance. We interpret these data as suggesting that similar mechanisms underpin both rehearsal and recall in ISR.     

The effects of stimulus set size and word frequency on verbal serial recall

Two experiments are reported which examine immediate serial recall for high-and low-frequency words. The words in each list were either repeatedly drawn from the same small pool of candidates (in the closed set conditions) or each word only ever occurred once during the experiment (in the open set conditions). The results consistently show an effect of word frequency but the effect of set size was only apparent for low-frequency words. It is argued that both frequency and set size effects reflect processes concerning the “clean-up” of degraded short-term memory traces.     

The effects of stimulus set size and word frequency on verbal serial recall

Two experiments are reported which examine immediate serial recall for high- and low-frequency words. The words in each list were either repeatedly drawn from the same small pool of candidates (in the closed set conditions) or each word only ever occurred once during the experiment (in the open set conditions). The results consistently show an effect of word frequency but the effect of set size was only apparent for low-frequency words. It is argued that both frequency and set size effects reflect processes concerning the "clean-up" of degraded short-term memory traces.     

Word frequency and the mixed-list paradox in immediate and delayed serial recall

In free recall tasks, when low- and high-frequency items are mixed within the to-be-remembered lists, the usual recall advantage found for high-frequency words is eliminated or reversed. Recently, this mixedlist paradox has also been demonstrated for short-term serial recall (Hulme, Stuart, Brown, & Morin, 2003). Although a number of theoretical interpretations of this mixed-list paradox have been proposed, researchers have also suggested that it could simply be a result of participant-controlled strategies (M. J. Watkins, LeCompte, & Kim, 2000). The present study was designed to assess whether this explanation could be applied to immediate and delayed serial recall. The results showed that high-frequency words were recalled better than low-frequency words in pure lists, but that this effect was eliminated in mixed lists, whether they were given under intentional or incidental learning conditions. This pattern suggests that the mixed-list paradox cannot be explained by participant-controlled strategies.     

Proactive interference in immediate serial recall

Two experiments yielded significant inter-list proactive interference (PI) in immediate serial recall of nine-consonants lists. This argues against the assumption that intra-trial rehearsal is sufficiently powerful to prevent PI from occurring. In the first experiment PI proved to be more pronounced in the case of visually than of auditorily presented lists to the extent that the modality effect on the prerecent items could be completely attributed to PI. PI also enlarged the effect of output interference through reversed order recall. These findings were confirmed in the second experiment which also showed that the effect of PI persisted at a slower presentation rate, suggesting that the role of rehearsal in counteracting PI should not be overestimated. Implications of these results for current notions on short-term retention are discussed.     

Transposition asymmetry in immediate serial recall

When participants confuse the position of items in immediate serial recall, they tend to recall transposed items too early rather than too late. This asymmetry of transposition errors was observed in four experiments. It increased as a function of list length, but was independent of report order, output position, cueing condition, and recall mode. The transposition asymmetry is consistent with error patterns in free recall and in regular speech production where transpositions are usually forward-looking. The asymmetry of transposition errors is discussed in terms of models of serial memory.     

Transposition asymmetry in immediate serial recall

When participants confuse the position of items in immediate serial recall, they tend to recall transposed items too early rather than too late. This asymmetry of transposition errors was observed in four experiments. It increased as a function of list length, but was independent of report order, output position, cueing condition, and recall mode. The transposition asymmetry is consistent with error patterns in free recall and in regular speech production where transpositions are usually forward‐looking. The asymmetry of transposition errors is discussed in terms of models of serial memory.     

Output order in immediate serial recall

In two experiments, we examined the effect of output order in immediate serial recall (ISR). In Experiment 1, three groups of participants saw lists of eight words and wrote down the words in the rows corresponding to their serial positions in an eight-row response grid. One group was precued to respond in forward order, a second group was precued to respond in any order, and a third group was postcued for response order. There were significant effects of output order, but not of cue type. Relative to the forward output order, the free output order led to enhanced recency and diminished primacy, with superior performance for words output early in recall. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 using six-item lists, which further suggests that output order plays an important role in the primacy effect in ISR and that the recency items are most highly accessible at recall.     

The effect of semantic relatedness on immediate serial recall and serial recognition

Several researchers have reported that learning a particular categorization leads to compatible changes in the similarity structure of the categorized stimuli. The purpose of this study is to examine whether different category structures may lead to greater or less corresponding similarity change. We created six category structures and examined changes in similarity within categories or between categories, as a result of categorization, in between-participant conditions. The best supported hypothesis was that the ease of learning a categorization affects change in within-categories similarity, so that greater (within-categories) similarity change was observed for category structures that were harder to learn.     

The effect of semantic relatedness on immediate serial recall and serial recognition

The present study examined the effects of semantic relatedness on immediate serial recall and serial recognition. Each participant received either blocked or randomly intermixed serial recall or serial recognition trials. Replicating the findings of previous studies (e.g., Saint-Aubin, Ouellette, & Poirier, 2005), semantic relatedness boosted percentage serial recall but also increased order errors, after taking into account the proportion of correctly recalled items, regardless of their orders, in serial recall trials. In serial recognition trials, participants' responses were slower and less accurate for related lists than for unrelated lists. There were intraindividual correlations among order memory measures in serial recall versus serial recognition trials. The implications of these findings for item redintegration theories are discussed.     

Disentangling the effects of word frequency and contextual diversity on serial recall performance

Research shows that contextual diversity (CD; the number of different contexts in which a word appears within a corpus) constitutes a better predictor of reading performance than word frequency (WF), that it mediates the access to lexical representations, and that controlling for contextual CD abolishes the effect of WF in lexical decision tasks. Despite the theoretical relevance of these findings for the study of serial memory, it is not known how CD might affect serial recall performance. We report the first independent manipulation of CD and WF in a serial recall task. Experiment 1 revealed better performance for low CD and for high WF words independently. Both effects affected omissions and item errors, but contrary to past research, word frequency also affected order errors. These results were confirmed in two more experiments comparing pure and alternating lists of low and high CD (Experiment 2) or WF (Experiment 3). The effect of CD was immune to this manipulation, while that of WF was abolished in alternating lists. Altogether the findings suggest a more difficult episodic retrieval of item information for words of high CD, and a role for both item and order information in the WF effect.     

Music-dependent memory in immediate and delayed word recall

Undergraduate volunteers rated a series of words for pleasantness while hearing a particular background music. The subjects in Experiment 1 received, immediately or after a 48-h delay, an unexpected word-recall test in one of the following musical cue contexts: same cue (S), different cue (D), or no cue (N). For immediate recall, context dependency (S-D) was significant but same-cue facilitation (S-N) was not. No cue effects at all were found for delayed recall, and there was a significant interaction between cue and retention interval. A similar interaction was also found in Experiment 3, which was designed to rule out an alternative explanation with respect to distraction. When the different musical selection was changed specifically in either tempo or form (genre), only pieces having an altered tempo produced significantly lower immediate recall compared with the same pieces (Experiment 2). The results support a stimulus generalization view of music-dependent memory.     

Phonological and semantic strategies in immediate serial recall

It has been suggested that certain theoretically important anomalous results in the area of verbal short-term memory could be attributable to differences in strategy. However there are relatively few studies that investigate strategy directly. We describe four experiments, each involving the immediate serial recall of word sequences under baseline control conditions, or preceded by instruction to use a phonological or semantic strategy. Two experiments varied phonological similarity at a presentation rate of one item every 1 or 2 seconds. Both the control and the phonologically instructed group showed clear effects of similarity at both presentation rates, whereas these were largely absent under semantic encoding conditions. Two further experiments manipulated word length at the same two rates. The phonologically instructed groups showed clear effects at both rates, the control group showed a clear effect at the rapid rate which diminished with the slower presentation, while the semantically instructed group showed a relatively weak effect at the rate of one item per second, and a significant reverse effect with slower presentation. The latter finding is interpreted in terms of fortuitous differences in inter-item rated associability between the two otherwise matched word pools, reinforcing our conclusion that the semantically instructed group were indeed encoding semantically. Implications for controlling strategy by instruction are discussed.     

Examining the relationship between word learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall in adults

Two experiments examined whether the association between word-learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall observed in children also exists in normal adults. The experiments also introduce a novel paradigm for studying word-learning. Experiment 1 studied the performance of 52 adults in nonword repetition, immediate serial recall, and word-learning tasks, examining the correlation between these measures. The results indicate that the developmental relationships between all three abilities also exist in adults. Experiment 2 investigated the robustness of these results using different stimuli and a variant of the word-learning task, and it also examined performance in a visuospatial span task, to test an alternative account of the results of Experiment 1; the results from 58 adults provide further evidence that the developmental association between word-learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall extends into adulthood. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of alternative models of the relationship between these abilities.     

Phonological and semantic strategies in immediate serial recall

It has been suggested that certain theoretically important anomalous results in the area of verbal short-term memory could be attributable to differences in strategy. However there are relatively few studies that investigate strategy directly. We describe four experiments, each involving the immediate serial recall of word sequences under baseline control conditions, or preceded by instruction to use a phonological or semantic strategy. Two experiments varied phonological similarity at a presentation rate of one item every 1 or 2 seconds. Both the control and the phonologically instructed group showed clear effects of similarity at both presentation rates, whereas these were largely absent under semantic encoding conditions. Two further experiments manipulated word length at the same two rates. The phonologically instructed groups showed clear effects at both rates, the control group showed a clear effect at the rapid rate which diminished with the slower presentation, while the semantically instructed group showed a relatively weak effect at the rate of one item per second, and a significant reverse effect with slower presentation. The latter finding is interpreted in terms of fortuitous differences in inter-item rated associability between the two otherwise matched word pools, reinforcing our conclusion that the semantically instructed group were indeed encoding semantically. Implications for controlling strategy by instruction are discussed.