Immediate serial recall of mixed-modality lists.

Seven experiments are reported in which subjects were tested for immediate serial recall of mixed-modality lists. On mixed auditory-visual lists, there was an advantage for auditory items at all serial positions. This was due to both a facilitation of auditory items and an inhibition of visual items on mixed lists, as compared with single-modality lists. When presented on a list containing items read silently, recall of items that were silently mouthed by the subject demonstrated patterns similar to those found with auditory items. When presented on a list containing items read aloud, recall of mouthed items showed patterns similar to those found with silently read items. The auditory advantage on mixed lists was found even when the list items were acoustically similar or identical and was not reduced by midlist auditory suffixes. The results suggest that modality differences in recall of mixed-modality lists are based on information different from that responsible for modality differences in recall of single-modality lists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recency and suffix effects in serial recall of musical stimuli.

Previous research indicates that auditory presentation of verbal items leads to larger recency effects in recall than visual presentation. This enhanced recency can be eliminated if a stimulus suffix (an irrelevant sound) follows the last item. Four experiments, with 126 university students as Ss, tested the hypothesis that recency and suffix effects in serial recall result from a speech-specific process. It was demonstrated that serial recall of musical notes played on a piano exhibited substantial recency effects. These recency effects were reduced when the list items were followed by either a piano chord or the word start. However, a white-noise suffix had no effect on recency. It is concluded that this pattern of data is consistent with current work on auditory perception and places constraints on theories of recency and suffix effects. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Within- and between-modality associations in probed recall: A test of the separate-streams hypothesis.

Tested the separate-streams hypothesis that short-term processing of verbal information is functionally separated according to presentation modality. Lists of 10 digits were presented to 32 university students such that presentation modality (auditory or visual) changed after every 2nd digit. One digit was repeated at the end of each list as a recall probe. In 1 condition (next-item), Ss were instructed to recall the item that had immediately followed the probe in the original list regardless of presentation modality. In the 2nd condition (next item in the same modality), Ss were instructed to recall the item after the probe and in the same modality. The combination of instructions and positions of the probe and target within the list created 3 main conditions: (1) The probe immediately preceded the target item and was in the same presentation modality (same-mode probe). (2) The probe immediately preceded the target but was in a different presentation modality (different-mode probe). (3) The probe was in the same modality as the target but was separated from it by 2 items in the other modality (temporally distant probe). For both auditory and visual targets, highest recall was obtained with same-mode probes, next highest with temporally distant probes, and lowest with different-mode probes. The results support the hypothesis that auditory and visual information is processed separately in short-term verbal memory. (French abstract) (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition learning in the immediate serial recall of visual and auditory materials.

In 5 experiments, a Hebb repetition effect, that is, improved immediate serial recall of an (unannounced) repeating list, was demonstrated in the immediate serial recall of visual materials, even when use of phonological short-term memory was blocked by concurrent articulation. The learning of a repeatedly presented letter list in one modality (auditory or visual) did not transfer to give improved performance on the same list in the other modality. This result was not replicated for word lists, however, for which asymmetric transfer was observed. Inferences are made about the structure of short-term memory and about the nature of the Hebb repetition effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When does between-sequence phonological similarity promote irrelevant sound disruption?

Typically, the phonological similarity between to-be-recalled items and TBI auditory stimuli has no impact if recall in serial order is required. However, in the present study, the authors have shown that the free recall, but not serial recall, of lists of phonologically related to-be-remembered items was disrupted by an irrelevant sound stream (end rhymes) sharing similar phonological content. These findings can be explained by the notion that between-sequence phonological similarity effects emerge when category-cueing processes become an important determinant for recall, such as when shared category information can be used as a retrieval aid to cue list items or plausible list candidates. In this case, the presence of categorically similar irrelevant items impairs the retrieval of list items and leads to intrusion error. Implications of these results for theories of auditory distraction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Isolation of a cytokinin gene, ZOG1, encoding zeatin O-glucosyltransferase from Phaseolus lunatus

University students who were skilled or less-skilled readers were compared on tests of auditory information processing and immediate serial recall of auditory and visual digits. Reading skill was defined by performance on a pseudoword reading task. The good readers exhibited typical modality effects with higher recall of auditory than visual items from the last 3 serial positions. On the terminal list item, the less-skilled readers showed a modality effect comparable with that of the skilled readers, but on other list items the modality effect reversed and a visual superiority was obtained. Results were discussed in terms of C. G. Penney's (1989) separate-streams model of short-term verbal memory.     

Unusual modality effects in less-skilled readers.

University students who were skilled or less-skilled readers were compared on tests of auditory information processing and immediate serial recall of auditory and visual digits. Reading skill was defined by performance on a pseudoword reading task. The good readers exhibited typical modality effects with higher recall of auditory than visual items from the last 3 serial positions. On the terminal list item, the less-skilled readers showed a modality effect comparable with that of the skilled readers, but on other list items the modality effect reversed and a visual superiority was obtained. Results were discussed in terms of C. G. Penney's (1989) separate-streams model of short-term verbal memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of mobilization of knowledge on recognition and recall.

Examined the effect of mobilization of knowledge on recall and recognition in 4 experiments, using 170 undergraduates. In Exp I, the mobilization group generated instances from a specified category and received a study list that contained some of these generated items as well as other members of the category that had not been generated. Control Ss received the same study list after they had generated instances from an irrelevant category. Contrary to previous findings by J. Peeck (see record 1983-22657-001), prior mobilization did not facilitate free recall of the generated study-list items and inhibited recall of nongenerated items. This pattern of recall was replicated in Exp II. The inhibitory effect of prior mobilization on nongenerated items was eliminated in Exp III, which used a recognition memory test. In addition, prior mobilization facilitated the recognition of generated study list items. Exp IV found that when knowledge about the mobilized category was limited, prior mobilization did facilitate free recall but only for generated study-list items. An attempt was made to reconcile data with previous results and to specify the conditions under which mobilization facilitates or inhibits subsequent memory performance. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explaining the irrelevant-sound effect: Temporal distinctiveness or changing state?

Task-irrelevant background sound disrupts serial recall. One account of this effect assumes that irrelevant events close to or during the presentation of a to-be-remembered list will interfere by disrupting temporal codes. A second account predicts that disruption will be greatest when the burden on rehearsal is high, as order cues in the auditory sequence interfere with those in the memory set. The authors tested these predictions by restricting the sound to different phases of the serial recall task. Sound presented just before the list and sound presented early in list presentation did not disrupt recall, but sound presented late in the list or after list presentation produced significant disruption. Sound presented after the list was more disruptive of recall for early list items than sound presented at the same time as those items. An account based on disruption of serial rehearsal, not the disruption of temporal codes, is supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The sandwich effect: The role of attentional factors in serial recall.

Five experiments tested the prediction, from a simple chaining model, that interleaving irrelevant material will substantially disrupt immediate serial recall. Exp 1 interpolated long or short words between items in an auditory digit span test. These 2 "sandwich" conditions disrupted recall to an equal but moderate extent. Exp 2 presented mixed lists of digits and words, cuing one or the other before or after presentation. Precuing led to substantially better recall. Exp 3 used articulatory suppression to rule out the hypothesis that recall was protected from the sandwich effect by subvocal rehearsal. Exp 4 combined the sandwich effect with a concurrent task, finding clear effects of both but no interaction. Exp 5 showed that the predictability of interpolated material did not influence recall. These results can be explained by adding an attentional preprocessor to standard chaining models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual–gestural (mis)mapping in serial short-term memory: The impact of talker variability.

The mechanisms underlying the poorer serial recall of talker-variable lists (e.g., alternating female–male voices) as compared with single-voice lists were examined. We tested the novel hypothesis that this talker variability effect arises from the tendency for perceptual organization to partition the list into streams based on voice such that the representation of order maps poorly onto the formation of a gestural sequence-output plan assembled in support of the reproduction of the true temporal order of the items. In line with the hypothesis, (a) the presence of a spoken lead-in designed to further promote by-voice perceptual partitioning accentuates the effect (Experiments 1 and 2); (b) the impairment is larger the greater the acoustic coherence is between nonadjacent items: Alternating-voice lists are more poorly recalled than four-voice lists (Experiment 3); and (c) talker variability combines nonadditively with phonological similarity, consistent with the view that both variables disrupt sequence output planning (Experiment 4). The results support the view that serial short-term memory performance reflects the action of sequencing processes embodied within general-purpose perceptual input-processing and gestural output-planning systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improving recall by recoding interfering material at the time of retrieval.

Four experiments demonstrate that interference of an interpolated list of items with recall of an original list can be substantially reduced by informing Ss just before testing how to reorganize and simplify the interpolated material. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss better recalled an initial serial list of letters when informed at testing that an interpolated list spelled a certain phrase backward. Similarly, in Exps 3 and 4, Ss better recalled an initial list of cities when told that the interpolated cities were also names of former US presidents. Control experiments rule out several simple explanations. In contrast to an editing hypothesis, the postorganizing clue helped recall even when problems of list differentiation were minimized. Current memory models appear unable to explain this benefit of a postlearning clue that enables Ss to segregate the interpolated material from the to-be-remembered material. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A common basis for recency effects in immediate and delayed recall.

Examined the effects of word frequency and list length on the long-term serial position curve in 2 experiments, using a total of 68 undergraduates. In Exp I, the object was to find a distractor activity that would be sufficient to eliminate the recency effect in conventional free recall. In Exp II, whether list length would show a similar pattern of effects in a continuous-distractor paradigm was examined. Results demonstrate that word frequency and list length had the same effects on the serial-position curve in the continuous-distractor paradigm of delayed recall that they had previously been shown to have in immediate recall. High word frequency and shorter lists led to improved recall of preterminal items but did not influence recall of terminal items. Results suggest that the same processes underlie recency effects in the 2 paradigms and that accounts that attribute recency effects to primary (or short-term) memory are inadequate. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness and semantic repetition effects in free recall: Evidence for dual-coding theory.

Tested the prediction of A. Paivio's (1971, 1976) dual-coding model, which states that semantic-repetition effects will be obtained for concrete but not abstract words. Dual-coding theory also asserts that semantic equivalents are encoded as a combination of separate verbal representations for all words and common imaginal representations for concrete equivalents. 96 undergraduates recalled a list that contained no-repetition, synonym-repetition, and identical-repetition items, half of which were concrete and half of which were abstract. Results show that, for concrete words, recall of synonym- and identical-repetition items did not differ significantly, and both conditions facilitated recall relative to no-repetition items. For abstract words, however, recall of synonym- and no-repetition items did not differ significantly, whereas identical-repetition items facilitated recall relative to both of these conditions. Findings support the prediction and demonstrate the importance of concreteness in semantic-repetition effects. (French abstract) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective and categorical organization of recall during posthypnotic amnesia.

Conducted 2 experiments to determine the fate of organization of recall during posthypnotic amnesia. In both studies, amnesia suggestions were administered to undergraduate Ss of low, medium, and high hypnotic susceptibility who had learned a word list by the method of free recall while they were hypnotized. In Exp I (n?=?44), words were unrelated to each other, and subjective organization was measured by raw and adjusted pair frequency. In Exp II (n?=–&59), words were drawn from various taxonomic categories, and category clustering was measured by repetition ratio, modified repetition ratio, and adjusted ratio of clustering. Results indicate that, compared to baseline levels, subjective organization and category clustering did not decrease reliably during the time the amnesia suggestion was in effect. Moreover, these aspects of strategic organization were not significantly correlated with the number of items recalled during amnesia. Both findings contrast with previous results concerning temporal organization of a word list memorized by the method of serial learning. Findings suggest that the disruption of retrieval processes in posthypnotic amnesia may be limited to certain organizational schemes. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cuing on recall from categorized word lists.

Explored the retrieval-deficit hypothesis by comparing free-recall under cued and noncued conditions in 2 groups of 36 5- and 8-yr-olds. On a 16-word list containing either 2, 4, or 8 categories, Ss received 2 trials of noncued recall. The 2nd trial was immediately followed by a test for cued recall. A comparison between cued recall performance and noncued recall performance on Trial 2 indicates that the younger children benefited more than the older children from the cuing procedure. For both age groups, there were effects of cuing on both the number of categories recalled and the number of items per category recalled. Clustering was observed at both age-levels but appeared unrelated to recall performance. Some of the results are discussed in connection with a retrieval deficit hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of differential encoding and feature overlap accounts of typicality effects in free recall.

Examined 2 accounts (the differential-encoding vs feature-overlap account) of the typicality effect in free recall. 64 students were assigned to 1 of 4 conditions (no cue, category cue, property cue, unrelated word), with half the Ss in each condition being presented with typical items and the other half given atypical items. Results support the feature overlap account. Providing a cue that emphasized the features of a category attenuated the difference in free recall accuracy and organization between typical and atypical items. Although number of items recalled increased by presentation of a typical list, the clustering measure appeared most affected by the typicality manipulation. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the relationship between free recall and immediate serial recall: The effects of list length and output order.

In 4 experiments, participants were presented with lists of between 1 and 15 words for tests of immediate memory. For all tasks, participants tended to initiate recall with the first word on the list for short lists. As the list length was increased, so there was a decreased tendency to start with the first list item; and, when free to do so, participants showed an increased tendency to start with one of the last 4 list items. In all tasks, the start position strongly influenced the shape of the resultant serial position curves: When recall started at Serial Position 1, elevated recall of early list items was observed; when recall started toward the end of the list, there were extended recency effects. These results occurred under immediate free recall (IFR) and different variants of immediate serial recall (ISR) and reconstruction of order (RoO) tasks. We argue that these findings have implications for the relationship between IFR and ISR and between rehearsal and recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociating conditional recency in immediate and delayed free recall: A challenge for unitary models of recency.

Temporal distinctiveness models of recency in free recall predict that increasing the delay between the end of sequence and attempting recall of items from that sequence will reduce recency. An empirical dissociation is reported here that violates this prediction when the delay is introduced by the act of recall itself. Analysis of data from a number of previously published free recall studies shows that when the assumed availability of final list items is taken into account, recency increases across the first few output positions in immediate recall despite the delay introduced by recalling items; no such change, with a trend to decreasing recency, is observed in delayed recall. Simulations are presented, showing that 2 models accounting for recency in free recall, the temporal context model (M. W. Howard & M. J. Kahana, 2002) and the SIMPLE model (G. D. A. Brown, I. Neath, & N. Chater, 2007), are unable to account for this novel pattern of data. Further simulations show that the results are consistent with a short-term buffer contributing to recency in immediate free recall and that ordered probing of items may also contribute to this effect; both of these are consistent with the formulation of a short-term buffer akin to models of serial recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of recency effects in free recall.

Discusses evidence casting doubt on the primary-memory account of the recency effect in recall and reviews an alternate account that attributes recency to the use of temporal or contextual cues. The discussion is presented in the paradigm of free recall. The recency effect refers to the fact that when people memorize a list of words, they tend to recall items at the end of the list more often than those in the middle. Recency effects have often been attributed to output from primary memory, a short-term memory buffer system. Evidence that recency effects can be found in the absence of primary memory (in conditions of concurrent distraction, multicategory lists, interactions of other independent variables with serial position, negative recency effects, and auditory recency) is reviewed. It is concluded that primary-memory theories are no longer adequate accounts for the recency effect. A temporal-contextual theory of the recency effect is discussed as a plausible alternative account, although these accounts are not fully developed or tested. (108 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)