Inhibitory control in memory: Evidence for negative priming in free recall

Cognitive control mechanisms-such as inhibition-decrease the likelihood that goal-directed activity is ceded to irrelevant events. Here, we use the action of auditory distraction to show how retrieval from episodic long-term memory is affected by competitor inhibition. Typically, a sequence of to-be-ignored spoken distracters drawn from the same semantic category as a list of visually presented to-be-recalled items impairs free recall performance. In line with competitor inhibition theory (Anderson, 2003), free recall was worse for items on a probe trial if they were a repeat of distracter items presented during the previous, prime, trial (Experiment 1). This effect was produced only when the distracters were dominant members of the same category as the to-be-recalled items on the prime. For prime trials in which distracters were low-dominant members of the to-be-remembered item category or were unrelated to that category-and hence not strong competitors for retrieval-positive priming was found (Experiments 2 and 3). These results are discussed in terms of inhibitory approaches to negative priming and memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Reification of phonological storage

We question the arguments and data presented by Larsen and Baddeley (this issue 2003) in support of the phonological loop account of verbal short-term memory on a number of grounds. These include the correlation between effect size and the presence of a phonological similarity effect in the data, and the existence elsewhere in the literature of effects of articulatory suppression and interference between verbal and nonverbal information that undermines the phonological loop account. We question the idea that short-term memory phenomena are best conceived of in terms of phonological storage, and we sketch an alternative perspective that does not rely on the notion of a bespoke phonological store, an entity that we argue represents a reification.