Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory

Immediate memory span and maximal articulation rate were assessed for word sets differing in frequency, word-neighborhood size, and average word-neighborhood frequency. Memory span was greater for high- than low-frequency words, greater for words from large than small phonological neighborhoods, and greater for words from high- than low-frequency phonological neighborhoods. Maximal articulation rate was also facilitated by word frequency, phonological-neighborhood size, and neighborhood frequency. In a final study all 3 lexical variables were found to influence the recall outcome for individual words. These effects of phonological-word neighborhood on memory performance suggest that phonological information in long-term memory plays an active role in recall in short-term-memory tasks, and they present a challenge to current theories of short-term memory.     

Memory span and short-term memory capacity: A developmental study

A memory span task involving series conditions comprised of several different types of material was administered to children from three grade levels (7–12 years of age). As expected, age differences were strongly affected by type of material, with two conditions (consonant letters, words) intended to restrict opportunities for chunking yielding age differences that were negligible, and one condition (consonant-vowel letters) constructed to maximize sequential probability yielding age differences that were large. This finding renders less plausible the popular notion that capacity increases with age, and suggests that age differences in memory span reflect chunking processes. Additional findings, which indicate that age differences in memory span are affected by method of presentation and stage of practice, suggest that these variables should be considered in studies aimed at estimating children's memory capacity.     

Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

The effects of auditory and visual presentation upon short-term retention of verbal stimuli are reviewed, and a model of the structure of short-term memory is presented. The main assumption of the model is that verbal information presented to the auditory and visual modalities is processed in separate streams that have different properties and capabilities. Auditory items are automatically encoded in both the A (acoustic) code, which, in the absence of subsequent input, can be maintained for some time without deliberate allocation of attention, and a P (phonological) code. Visual items are retained in both the P code and a visual code. Within the auditory stream, successive items are strongly associated; in contrast, in the visual modality, it is simultaneously presented items that are strongly associated. These assumptions about the structure of short-term verbal memory are shown to account for many of the observed effect of presentation modality.     

A developmental phonological short-term memory deficit: a case study

A developmental case of phonological short-term memory deficit was studied in a highly educated subject. The subject, BS, who had obtained a Ph.D. in molecular biology, demonstrated striking deficits on some short-term memory tasks, particularly for auditorily presented nonword lists. With visual presentation and with meaningful words, he often scored at a normal level. The results indicate a deficit in retaining phonological information but an ability to use visual, lexical, and semantic information to boost recall. Despite this phonological short-term memory deficit, BS scored at a normal level on a syntactic comprehension test and on reading of nonwords. He was impaired, however, on repeated list learning, learning of foreign vocabulary, and transcribing dictated materials. The implications of these results for models of short-term memory and the uses of phonological retention in cognitive processing are discussed.     

Critical processes in serial short-term memory: A developmental study

Two experiments are described which were designed to test the possible involvement of two operations in developmental auditory serial short-term memory (SSTM), namely rehearsal proficiency and item identification. The experiments provided mainly negative support for the notion that these operations are critical in developmental SSTM. As an alternative, the possibility that developmental differences in SSTM might have their origins in the processing of speech sound patterns was discussed.     

A new model of verbal short-term memory

Two experiments tested a neo-Piagetian model of verbal short-term memory and compared it with the articulatory loop model. Experiment 1 (n = 113, age range 9-11) tested word span for 2-, 3-, and 4-syllable words, with both visual and auditory presentation. Experiment 2 (with the same participants) tested recall of visually presented supraspan lists. Measures of M capacity (as conceived in Pascual-Leone's neo-Piagetian theory) and articulation rate were also used. The proposed model can account for the effects of M capacity, word length, and presentation modality. The fit of this model to the data was acceptable, and parameter estimates were consistent across experiments. Furthermore, a correlation was found between M capacity and word span which resisted partialling out of age and articulation rate.     

Musical and verbal memory in Alzheimer’s disease: A study of long-term and short-term memory

Musical memory was tested in Alzheimer patients and in healthy older adults using long-term and short-term memory tasks. Long-term memory (LTM) was tested with a recognition procedure using unfamiliar melodies. Short-term memory (STM) was evaluated with same/different judgment tasks on short series of notes. Musical memory was compared to verbal memory using a task that used pseudowords (LTM) or syllables (STM). Results indicated impaired musical memory in AD patients relative to healthy controls. The deficit was found for both long-term and short-term memory. Furthermore, it was of the same magnitude for both musical and verbal domains whether tested with short-term or long-term memory tasks. No correlation was found between musical and verbal LTM. However, there was a significant correlation between verbal and musical STM in AD participants and healthy older adults, which suggests that the two domains may share common mechanisms.     

A comparison of serial order short-term memory effects across verbal and musical domains

Recent studies suggest that the mechanisms involved in the short-term retention of serial order information may be shared across short-term memory (STM) domains such as verbal and visuospatial STM. Given the intrinsic sequential organization of musical material, the study of STM for musical information may be particularly informative about serial order retention processes and their domain-generality. The present experiment examined serial order STM for verbal and musical sequences in participants with no advanced musical expertise and experienced musicians. Serial order STM for verbal information was assessed via a serial order reconstruction task for digit sequences. In the musical domain, serial order STM was assessed using a novel melodic sequence reconstruction task maximizing the retention of tone order information. We observed that performance for the verbal and musical tasks was characterized by sequence length as well as primacy and recency effects. Serial order errors in both tasks were characterized by similar transposition gradients and ratios of fill-in:infill errors. These effects were observed for both participant groups, although the transposition gradients and ratios of fill-in:infill errors showed additional specificities for musician participants in the musical task. The data support domain-general serial order STM effects but also suggest the existence of additional domain-specific effects. Implications for models of serial order STM in verbal and musical domains are discussed.     

A method for cross-cultural adaptation of a verbal memory assessment

Verbal memory tests—although important to the neuropsychological assessment of memory—are biased to many cultures. In the present article, we highlighted the limitations associated with the direct translation of tests and word matching, as well as the lack of ecological validity and cultural appropriateness when tests developed in one culture are used in another. To overcome these limitations, a verbal memory paradigm was developed that framed the memory assessment with a shopping-list format, but that developed culturally specific stimuli for the different language groups. The aim of the present study was to determine the equivalence of this shopping list memory test in different cultural and language groups. Eighty-three adults from English-, French-, Malay-, and Chinese-speaking cultures participated in four experiments. The results of all the experiments indicated that performance of verbal list learning is equivalent, irrespective of the language used. These results support the use of this methodology for minimizing cross-cultural test bias, and have important implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse individuals.     

A developmental study of the effect of familiarity on short-term visual memory

An attempt was made to specify whether previously reported limitations on young children's full-report capacity lay in a smaller amount of available information, in a shorter trace duration of information in visual information storage (VIS), or in poorer coding of information into permanent storage. Five- and 8-year-olds and adults were shown an eight-item array of figures. followed at varying intervals by an indicator signaling the subject to report the figure to which the indicator had pointed. The effects of three levels of familiarity or “labelability” were examined. While no age differences were revealed in amount of information available nor in the trace duration of information in VIS, strong age differences emerged in coding of information into permanent storage. Data on latency to verbal labeling and familiarity suggested that verbal labeling could not account for the age trends. Rather, the differences seemed to lie in the use of organized visual coding and rehearsal strategies by adults and their relative lack of use by children.     

A developmental study of semantic effects on recognition memory

Three experiments evaluated color specificity knowledge and related semantic effects on recognition memory. Experiment I provided the necessary baseline data to show that preschool and college students know the appropriate color of objects. Experiment II revealed semantic effects on recognition of children but not adults. In Experiment III a delay was introduced and adults showed semantic effects as well. The chroma of color-specific and non-color-specific items was remembered relatively well, although chroma recognition for these item types was somewhat different. The semantic effects on very young children's memory suggest deep level interpretive processing in children younger than those generally showing deliberate deployment of memory strategies.     

Two modality effects in verbal short-term memory: Evidence from sentence recall

This paper investigates the mechanisms underlying the standard modality effect (i.e., better recall performance for auditorily presented than for visually presented materials), and the modality congruency effect (i.e., better memory performance if the mode of recall and presentation are congruent rather than incongruent). We tested the assumption that the standard modality effect is restricted to the most recent word(s) of the sentences but occurs in both verbatim and gist recall (Experiments 1 and 2), whereas the modality congruency effect should be evident for the rest of the sentence when using verbatim recall (Experiment 3) but not when using gist recall (Experiment 4). All experiments used the Potter-Lombardi intrusion paradigm. When the target word was the most recent word of the sentence, a standard modality effect was found with both verbatim recall and gist recall. When the target word was included in the middle of the sentences, a modality congruency effect was found with verbatim recall but not with gist recall.     

The impact of aging and hearing status on verbal short-term memory

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of hearing status on age-related decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This was done by administering a battery of verbal STM tasks to elderly and young adult participants matched for hearing thresholds, as well as to young normal-hearing control participants. The matching procedure allowed us to assess the importance of hearing loss as an explanatory factor of age-related STM decline. We observed that elderly participants and hearing-matched young participants showed equal levels of performance in all verbal STM tasks, and performed overall lower than the normal-hearing young control participants. This study provides evidence for recent theoretical accounts considering reduced hearing level as an important explanatory factor of poor auditory-verbal STM performance in older adults.     

Group aggregates and individual reliability: The case of verbal short-term memory

Two experiments examined the generalizability of the effects of word length and phonological similarity with visual and auditory presentation in immediate verbal serial ordered recall. In Experiment 1, data were collected from 251 adult volunteers drawn from a broad cross-section of the normal population. Word length and phonological similarity in both presentation modes significantly influenced the group means. However, 43% of the subjects failed to show at least one of the effects, and the likelihood that effects appeared was highly correlated with verbal memory span. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects of the original sample were retested, 20 of whom had failed to show one or more effects in Experiment 1. Whether or not an effect had appeared for individual subjects on the first test session was a poor predictor of whether the effect would appear on retest. Finally, an analysis of subject reports demonstrated that the patterns of experimental data could be accounted for in part by the strategies that subjects reported using, and the effect of strategy was independent of the effect of span. The implications of these findings for theories of verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

The effects of narrative context on French verbal inflections: A developmental perspective

This experiment examines how narrative context affects French subjects' selection of past imperfective (imparfait) vs. perfective inflections with different predicate types. Adults and 10-year-old children were asked to inflect verbs presented in their written infinitive form in two conditions: (a) in isolated sentences; (b) embedded in the beginning, middle, or end of narratives. Regardless of conditions, the adults rarely used theimparfait with punctual resultative predicates. In both conditions, the frequency ofimparfait was high with durative predicates, particularly with aresultative ones, but it varied with position in the narratives, being highest at the beginning and lowest at the end. Although the children also used the imparfait frequently with durative predicates, they overgeneralized it to punctual resultative ones, regardless of conditions and of positions. These results show that adult uses of the imperfective/perfective distinction are determined by both predicate properties and grounding in narrative context. The children are less sensitive to some predicate properties than the adults and they do not differentiate imperfective/perfective aspect consistently as a function of discourse context.     

The effects of retention interval on preschool children's short-term memory of verbal items

The short-term recall of word-triads was tested, comparing retention over three types of intervals within 24 preschoolers. Retention was significantly lower in the 16 sec unfilled interval condition than in the immediate test condition. This result, predicted from preschoolers' rehearsal deficiency, differs from those obtained in previous adult and child studies. A filled interval condition, requiring irrelevant verbal activity during the 16 sec period, significantly reduced recall from that of the unfilled interval condition. Recognition of the word items on a subsequent recognition test was greater than chance and was not affected by interval condition. This suggests that the condition effects in short-term recall did not disrupt the long-term storage of the items.     

The uses of short-term memory: A case study

It has been widely claimed that the systems employed in tasks of immediate memory have a function in the comprehension of speech; these systems, it has been proposed, are used to hold a representation of the speech until a syntactic analysis and interpretation have been completed. Such a holding function is meant to be especially important where the sentences heard are long or complex. It has thus been predicted that subjects with impaired short-term memory performance would show deficits in comprehension of such materials.

In this study, one subject with impaired phonological processing and a severely reduced digit span was tested on a range of tasks requiring the syntactic analysis, memory and comprehension of long and complex material. She was found to be unimpaired on syntactic analysis and comprehension, but not on sentence repetition. The implications for models of short-term memory are discussed.     

Self-corrected elaboration effects on incidental memory

Subjects performed an orienting task involving 3 conditions followed by an unexpected free recall test. The conditions were designed to force 3 types of corrected elaborations: Generated Correction, Chosen Correction, and No Correction. In the Generated Correction condition the subjects were presented with a target word (e.g., Baby) and a bizarre sentence frame (e.g., "____drinks beer.") and asked to correct the target to a congruous word (e.g., Uncle) to make a common sentence. In the Chosen Correction condition, the subjects were presented with a target and its bizarre sentence frame and asked to choose one of the alternative congruous words (e.g., Uncle, Aunt) to make a common sentence. In the No Correction condition, the subjects were presented with a target and its bizarre sentence frame and asked to rate the congruity of each target to its sentence frame. Generated Correction led to a better performance than Chosen Correction and No Correction, but a difference between the last two correction types was not found. These results were interpreted as showing that, by generating correct information, self-corrected elaboration led to facilitation of incidental memory.     

Long‐term memory effects on verbal short‐term memory: A replication study

The influence of lexico‐semantic language representations stored in long‐term memory (LTM) on short‐term memory (STM) performance has been studied extensively in adults. However, there are relatively few data on lexico‐semantic LTM effects on STM in children. On the other hand, the influence of phonological LTM effects on STM has been studied more extensively in children than in adults. In this study, we explored whether these different LTM effects on verbal STM could be replicated in both adults and children by administering immediate serial recall tasks (ISR) for high‐ and lowfrequency words, for high‐ and low‐imageability words, for words and non‐words, and for high and low phonotactic frequency non‐words to 6‐, 8‐, and 10‐year‐old children, to adolescents and to adults. Significant word frequency, lexicality and phonotactic frequency effects were observed in all age groups, as well as a word imageability effect which was, however, weaker than the other three effects. Our data suggest that LTM effects on STM are equivalent in both children and adults.