Lexical and semantic influences on item and order memory in immediate serial recognition: Evidence from a novel task

Previous studies have reported that, in contrast to the effect on immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic factors have little effect on immediate serial recognition. This has been taken as evidence that linguistic knowledge contributes to verbal short-term memory in a redintegrative process at recall. Contrary to this view, we found that lexicality, frequency, and imageability all influenced matching span. The standard matching span task, requiring changes in item order to be detected, was less susceptible to lexical/semantic factors than was a novel task involving the detection of phoneme order and hence item identity changes. Therefore, in both immediate recognition and immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic knowledge makes a greater contribution to item identity than to item order memory. Task sensitivity, and not the absence of overt recall, may have underpinned previous failures to show effects of these variables in immediate recognition. We also compared matching span for pure and unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. Lexicality had a larger impact on immediate recognition for pure than for mixed lists, in line with findings for immediate serial recall. List composition affected the detection of phoneme but not item order changes in matching span; similarly, in recall, mixed lists produce more frequent word phoneme migrations but not migrations of entire items. These results point to strong similarities between immediate serial recall and recognition. Lexical/semantic knowledge may contribute to phonological stability in both tasks.     

Lexical and semantic influences on item and order memory in immediate serial recognition: evidence from a novel task

Previous studies have reported that, in contrast to the effect on immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic factors have little effect on immediate serial recognition. This has been taken as evidence that linguistic knowledge contributes to verbal short-term memory in a redintegrative process at recall. Contrary to this view, we found that lexicality, frequency, and imageability all influenced matching span. The standard matching span task, requiring changes in item order to be detected, was less susceptible to lexical/semantic factors than was a novel task involving the detection of phoneme order and hence item identity changes. Therefore, in both immediate recognition and immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic knowledge makes a greater contribution to item identity than to item order memory. Task sensitivity, and not the absence of overt recall, may have underpinned previous failures to show effects of these variables in immediate recognition. We also compared matching span for pure and unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. Lexicality had a larger impact on immediate recognition for pure than for mixed lists, in line with findings for immediate serial recall. List composition affected the detection of phoneme but not item order changes in matching span; similarly, in recall, mixed lists produce more frequent word phoneme migrations but not migrations of entire items. These results point to strong similarities between immediate serial recall and recognition. Lexical/semantic knowledge may contribute to phonological stability in both tasks.     

Stimulus similarity decrements in children's working memory span

Two experiments investigated the impact of the relationship between processing and storage stimuli on the working memory span task performance of children aged 7 and 9 years of age. In Experiment 1, two types of span task were administered (sentence span and operation span), and participants were required to recall either the products of the processing task (sentence-final word, arithmetic total) or a word or digit unrelated to the processing task. Experiment 2 contrasted sentence span and operation span combined with storage of either words or digits, in tasks in which the item to be remembered was not a direct product of the processing task in either condition. In both experiments, memory span was significantly greater when the items to be recalled belonged to a different stimulus category from the material that was processed, so that in sentence span tasks, number recall was superior to word recall, and in operation span tasks, word recall was superior to number recall. Explanations of these findings in terms of similarity-based interference and response competition in working memory are discussed.     

What can we learn about immediate memory from the development of children's free recall?

We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.     

Segregation accuracy in item‐method directed forgetting across multiple tests

Two experiments examined recall across tests following item‐method directed‐forgetting instructions and the varying of presentation duration of items at study. For both immediate testing (Experiment 1) and delayed testing (Experiment 2), accurate recall of remember instruction items (R‐items) exceeded the accurate recall of forget instruction items (F‐items). However, some F‐items from study were inaccurately recalled as R‐items and R‐items from study as F‐items. Inaccurate recall persisted across tests for both immediate and delayed recall and increased across tests for immediate recall. We view the R‐item advantage in accurate recall as consistent with the account they receive more rehearsal at study than do F‐items. We view inaccurate recall as reflecting the bias to report items retrieved on an immediate test lacking instructional tags as F‐items. On delayed tests, items retrieved lacking instructional tags are first assessed against a criterion point on a memory‐strength continuum and those with strength above the criterion reported as R‐items and those below the criterion as F‐items.     

Memory for Related and Unrelated Words: Further Evidence on the Influence of Semantic Factors in Immediate Serial Recall

A number of recent studies have explored the role of long-term memory factors in memory span tasks. The effects of lexicality, frequency, imageability, and word class have been investigated. The work reported in this paper examined the effect of semantic organization on the recall of short lists of words. Specifically, the influence of semantic category on immediate serial recall and the interaction of this variable with articulatory suppression was investigated in three experiments. Experiment 1 compared immediate serial recall performance when lists comprising items from the same semantic category were used (homogeneous condition) with a situation where lists held items from different semantic categories. Experiment 2 examined the same conditions with and without articulatory suppression during item presentation, and Experiment 3 reproduced these conditions with suppression occurring throughout presentation and recall. Results of all three experiments showed a clear advantage for the homogeneous condition. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the homogeneous category advantage did not depend on the articulatory loop. Furthermore, error analysis indicated that this effect was mainly attributable to better item information recall for the homogeneous condition. These results are interpreted as reflecting a long-term memory contribution to the recall stage of immediate serial recall tasks.     

Short-term retention of a single word relies on retrieval from long-term memory when both rehearsal and refreshing are disrupted

Many working memory (WM) models propose that the focus of attention (or primary memory) has a capacity limit of one to four items, and therefore, that performance on WM tasks involves retrieving some items from long-term (or secondary) memory (LTM). In the present study, we present evidence suggesting that recall of even one item on a WM task can involve retrieving it from LTM. The WM task required participants to make a deep (living/nonliving) or shallow (“e”/no “e”) level-of-processing (LOP) judgment on one word and to recall the word after a 10-s delay on each trial. During the delay, participants either rehearsed the word or performed an easy or a hard math task. When the to-be-remembered item could be rehearsed, recall was fast and accurate. When it was followed by a math task, recall was slower, error-prone, and benefited from a deeper LOP at encoding, especially for the hard math condition. The authors suggest that a covert-retrieval mechanism may have refreshed the item during easy math, and that the hard math condition shows that even a single item cannot be reliably held in WM during a sufficiently distracting task—therefore, recalling the item involved retrieving it from LTM. Additionally, performance on a final free recall (LTM) test was better for items recalled following math than following rehearsal, suggesting that initial recall following math involved elaborative retrieval from LTM, whereas rehearsal did not. The authors suggest that the extent to which performance on WM tasks involves retrieval from LTM depends on the amounts of disruption to both rehearsal and covert-retrieval/refreshing maintenance mechanisms.     

Maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of repeated memory tests for older adults

Repeatedly trying to remember information can help people remember more but can also lead to inaccuracies. Two experiments examined whether the costs of repeated recall efforts can be minimized for older adults by using memory tests that require specification of the source of recalled items. Participants saw and imagined pictures and then took 3 successive recall tests in which they either indicated the source of each remembered item (source recall) or simply recalled the items without specification of their source (free recall). Results showed that recall increased systematically from Test 1 to Test 3, although the rate of increase was less marked for older adults, and older adults recalled less overall. After the free recall tests, older adults made more source misattributions (claiming to have seen imagined items) than did young adults, but after the source recall tests, age differences were not significant. Thus, repeatedly recalling items while considering their source was associated with benefits in terms of increased recall and fewer costs in terms of source errors.     

The Word-length Effect and Disyllabic Words

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.     

The development of the use of long-term knowledge to assist short-term recall

The influence of item familiarity upon memory span was examined in adults and children aged 5, 7, and 10 years by comparing the recall of words and nonwords. Using a probed recall task, both item recall and position recall were tested. The effect of familiarity upon item recall was found to develop with age, from no effects in the 5-year-olds to significant effects in the older children and adults. By contrast, no effect of familiarity was found at any age when recall of position was required. Dissociations between word length effects and familiarity effects supported the conclusion that the familiarity effect does not result from rehearsal. Several explanations for the source of the familiarity effect were examined, and the familiarity effect was attributed to a strategic redintegration or reconstruction process, which is necessary for item recall but not for position recall.     

The effect of increased incentive on free recall by learning-disabled and nondisabled children

Immediate free recall by learning-disabled and nondisabled children was compared under two incentive conditions. Recall of the first few words of each list by disabled children and younger nondisabled children was lower than that by older nondisabled children, and receiving a monetary reward increased early list item recall by older disabled and nondisabled learners. These findings suggest that elaborative encoding processes, such as rehearsal, are impaired in younger disabled and nondisabled children and that receiving a reward increased elaborative encoding by older children. Similar recall of the last few list items by all groups suggests that attention and immediate memory are comparable in disabled and nondisabled children of different ages. Receiving a reward increased recall of the last few list items by younger disabled and nondisabled children, suggesting that a reward increased attention, immediate memory, or both, in these groups. Because receiving a reward increased recall equally in all groups, lower motivation did not appear to be responsible for the lower recall by younger nondisabled children and learning-disabled children.     

Dissociative effects of generation on item and order retention.

The effects of generation on the long-term retention of item and order information were examined in a between-list design in 3 experiments. In each experiment, completing word fragments during presentation significantly impaired long-term retention of serial order, as measured by either a reconstruction task or the amount of input-output correspondence in free recall. Memory for the individual items, however, was sometimes helped by generation. This pattern of dissociation, reminiscent of immediate memory findings, is used to interpret problematic issues in the generation effect literature and to argue for the role of the item-order distinction in the long-term-memory arena.     

REPETITION DEAFNESS:

Abstract— This research demonstrates a new cognitive phenomenon known as repetition deafness, a difficulty in immediate recall of repeated words in computer-compressed speech Sixty-four subjects heard sentences and lists at four speeded rates 70, 55, 35, and 28 msl phoneme Each target word in the materials followed a pretarget word that was either identical (repeated-target condition) or different (unrepeated-target condition), and targets were harder to recall when repeated than unrepeated Repetition deafness was rate-limited, occurring only with rapid rates of presentation (55 mslphoneme or less), and decreased in magnitude as structure increased from lists to sentences Implications for current theories of repetition deficits are discussed     

Item Interference and Time Delays in Working Memory: Immediate Serial Recall

Limitations on immediate recall span have been related by some to temporal limitations of an articulatory rehearsal loop (Baddeley, 1986), and by others to retroactive interference from subsequent items (Lewandowsky & Murdock, 1989; Neath & Nairne, 1995). In the current study, the number of intervening items and retention delays were partially decoupled by varying presentation rate and materials sets. Recently, memory span effects often attributed to temporal limits in rehearsal were shown to be directly related to the output delays during the act of recall (Dosher & Ma, 1998). A functional model of working memory provides a framework within which to evaluate the relative contributions of item interference and retention delays in the accuracy of recall at each serial position. Output delays during recall and interference from items during study were the primary factors in limiting recall, with small additional effects of time delays during study.     

Temporal–contextual processing in working memory: Evidence from delayed cued recall and delayed free recall tests

Three experiments are reported that addressed the nature of processing in working memory by investigating patterns of delayed cued recall and free recall of items initially studied during complex and simple span tasks. In Experiment 1, items initially studied during a complex span task (i.e., operation span) were more likely to be recalled after a delay in response to temporal–contextual cues, relative to items from subspan and supraspan list lengths in a simple span task (i.e., word span). In Experiment 2, items initially studied during operation span were more likely to be recalled from neighboring serial positions during delayed free recall than were items studied during word span trials. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the number of attentional refreshing opportunities strongly predicts episodic memory performance, regardless of whether the information is presented in a spaced or massed format in a modified operation span task. The results indicate that the content–context bindings created during complex span trials reflect attentional refreshing opportunities that are used to maintain items in working memory.     

Reminiscence and item recovery in free recall

The item recovery or reminiscence component of recall in RTT procedures was investigated in two free recall experiments. In the first, Erdelyi and Becker's (1974) "hypermnesia" effect was found with pictures as the to-be-remembered material: total amount recalled increased over two successive test trials, and included a large reminiscence effect, with some 27% of previously unrecalled items appearing in the second test. The second experiment, with word lists, showed that the frequency of occurrence of new items was greater following a 12-min separation of two test trials than in two relatively massed tests. This kind of item recovery is relevant to models of output interference and retrieval limitations in free recall, and may be also related to spontaneous recovery effects.     

Explaining the forgetting bias effect on value judgments: The influence of memory for a past test

People often feel that information that was forgotten is less important than remembered information. Prior work has shown that participants assign higher importance to remembered information while undervaluing forgotten information. The current study examined two possible accounts of this finding. In three experiments, participants studied lists of words in which each word was randomly assigned a point value denoting the value of remembering the word. Following the presentation of each list participants engaged in a free recall test. After the presentation of all lists participants were shown each of the words they had studied and asked to recall the point value that was initially paired with each word. Experiment 1 tested a fluency-based account by presenting items for value judgments in a low-fluency or high-fluency format. Experiment 2 examined whether value judgments reflect attributions based on the familiarity of an item when value judgments are made. Finally, in Experiment 3, we evaluated whether participants believe that forgotten words are less important by having them judge whether an item was initially recalled or forgotten prior to making a value judgment. Manipulating the fluency of an item presented for judgment had no influence on value ratings (Experiment 1) and familiarity exerted a limited influence on value judgments (Experiment 2). More importantly, participants’ value judgments appeared to reflect a theory that remembered information is more valuable than forgotten information (Experiment 3). Overall, the present work suggests that individuals may apply a theory about remembering and forgetting to retrospectively assess the value of information.     

On the generality of some memory laws

Several memory laws have been established for the free recall of word lists. The generality of some of these laws were tested, using tasks which the subjects performed (SPTs) as to-be-recalled list items. SPT recall obeyed one law of word recall in showing a strong positive recency effect in immediate free recall, which appeared to be due to these events being in a temporary state of high accessibility. Differences between word and SPT recall were: 1) The reliable primacy effect associated with word recall did not appear in SPT recall; 2) Subjects reported using active memorisation strategies for word lists, but not for SPT lists; 3) Unlike word recall, diverting the subject's attention to so-called deep or shallow features of the SPTs during presentation did not affect the level of their recall. These results considered together with Cohen & Stewart's (1981) finding that SPT recall was not age-sensitive were taken to indicate that SPTs should be regarded as a different class of memory event than words, and that memory models dealing with SPT recall should de-emphasize the importance of encoding, stressing instead retention, and retrieval operations.     

Semantic Similarity and Immediate Serial Recall: Is There a Detrimental Effect on Order Information?

Four experiments investigated the disruptive effect of semantic similarity on short-term ordered recall. Experiments 1 and 2 contrasted immediate serial recall performance for lists of semantically similar items, drawn from the same semantic category, with performance for lists that contained items from different categories. Experiments 1 and 2 showed the usual similarity advantage for item information recall, but, contrary to expectations, there was no similarity disadvantage for the recall of order information, even when the level of item recall was controlled. Experiments 3 and 4 replicate and extend these findings by using an order reconstruction task or a limited word pool strategy, both of which yield alternate measures of order retention. These findings clearly contradict the widespread belief stating that semantic similarity hinders the short-term recall of order information. Results are discussed in the light of a retrieval-based account where the effects of semantic similarity reflect the processes called upon at recall: It is suggested that long-term knowledge is accessed to support the interpretation of degraded phonological traces.     

The relationship between memory performance and the number of rehearsals in free recall

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between the number of rehearsals and long-term recall performance by means of an overt rehearsal procedure. Subjects were induced to concentrate their rehearsal activity on specific items in free recall tasks. In Experiment 1, both the primacy and the recency items that had received additional rehearsals were recalled with higher probability than were the ordinarily rehearsed items in immediate recall but not in final recall. Experiment 2 was designed to extend the occasions for subjects’ rehearsal by manipulating the rate of item presentation. The overall pattern of resulting data shewed that for neither recency items nor primacy items does the additional overt rehearsal reliably lead to facilitative effects on long-term recall performance. The possibility of a qualitative change in rehearsal is discussed.