Seven experiments investigated the role of rehearsal in free recall to determine whether accounts of recency effects based on the ratio rule could be extended to provide an account of primacy effects based on the number, distribution, and recency of the rehearsals of the study items. Primacy items were rehearsed more often and further toward the end of the list than middle items, particularly with a slow presentation rate (Experiment 1) and with high-frequency words (Experiment 2). Recency, but not primacy, was reduced by a filled delay (Experiment 3), although significant recency survived a filled retention interval when a fixed-rehearsal strategy was used (Experiment 4). Experimenter-presented schedules of rehearsals resulted in similar serial position curves to those observed with participant-generated rehearsals (Experiment 5) and were used to confirm the main findings in Experiments 6 and 7.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The overall aim of this research is to promote greater theoretical integration between two highly important and widely-used tests of immediate memory: immediate serial recall (ISR) and immediate free recall. The main claim of the paper is that greater theoretical integration between these tasks can be achieved, if only researchers understood fully the effects of increasing list length on both tasks. To this end, we report the data from four experiments looking at the effects of increasing list length on the output order and serial position curves for the immediate free recall task, and the ISR task and its variants. Permanent repository linkAt first glance, one might think that there should be no need to promote greater theoretical integration between ISR and free recall. On the face of it, the methodologies of the two immediate memory tests are remarkably similar: in both tasks, participants are presented with a sequence of items and at the end of the list they must try to recall as many items as possible, in either the same order as that presented (ISR) or in any order (free recall). In addition, both tasks share a common theoretical heritage. Both tasks have provided empirical evidence taken as key 'signature findings' supporting the establishment of a short-term memory store (STS) of limited capacity: in ISR, the memory span limitation has been taken to reflect the limited capacity of verbal STS (whether this be measured in items, chunks, or time, e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Miller, 1956) and the advantage in recall of the last items known as the recency effect in free recall has also been taken as evidence for the direct output of items at test from a short-term buffer store (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971;Glanzer, 1972) It is therefore perhaps surprising that most current theories of ISR do not provide a detailed account of free recall. For example, currently influential accounts of ISR include: the phonological loop model of working memory

Any mature field of research in psychology-such as short-term/working memory-is characterized by a wealth of empirical findings. It is currently unrealistic to expect a theory to explain them all; theorists must satisfice with explaining a subset of findings. The aim of the present article is to make the choice of that subset less arbitrary and idiosyncratic than is current practice. We propose criteria for identifying benchmark findings that every theory in a field should be able to explain: Benchmarks should be reproducible, generalize across materials and methodological variations, and be theoretically informative. We propose a set of benchmarks for theories and computational models of short-term and working memory. The benchmarks are described in as theory-neutral a way as possible, so that they can serve as empirical common ground for competing theoretical approaches. Benchmarks are rated on three levels according to their priority for explanation. Selection and ratings of the benchmarks is based on consensus among the authors, who jointly represent a broad range of theoretical perspectives on working memory, and they are supported by a survey among other experts on working memory. The article is accompanied by a web page providing an open forum for discussion and for submitting proposals for new benchmarks; and a repository for reference data sets for each benchmark. (PsycINFO Database Record

No abstract

No abstract