Backward serial recall and benchmark effects of working memory

Bireta, Tamra J.; Fry, Sheena E.; Jalbert, Annie; Neath, Ian; Surprenant, Aimée M.; Tehan, Gerald

doi:10.1037/e520562012-440

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Most important, we have replicated and generalized prior research showing that strong word length effects are observed in forward recall and that these effects are eliminated with backward recall (Bireta et al, 2010;Surprenant et al, 2011). Thus, the attenuation of word length effects in backward recall is independent of the word pool used and the specific type of serial recall test.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

“…In any task, the weighting parameters for item and order memory can change, but they must always sum to 1. Where SIMPLE has been applied to the word length effect in forward and backward recall (Bireta et al, 2010), a higher weighting was assigned for backward recall than for forward recall. This was the only parameter among many that differed in modeling forward and backward recall.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The studies above, however, did not examine forward and backward recall in the same experiment, so it is hard to evaluate the strength of the word length effects in the studies in which there were significant effects. When the two directions are manipulated in the same experiment, word length effects are present in forward recall but absent in backward recall (Bireta et al, 2010;Roche, Tolan, & Tehan, 2011;Surprenant et al, 2011).…”

Section: Word Length In Forward and Backward Serial Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, the syllable-based effect, where length is determined by the number of syllables, is a robust phenomenon and is widely observed in a range of both short-term and long-term memory tasks where memory for order is required, such as reconstruction of order (Bireta et al, 2010;Nairne, Neath, & Serra, 1997;Surprenant et al, 2011), serial recognition (Baddeley, Chincotta, Stafford, & Turk, 2002), free recall (Tehan & Tolan, 2007;Watkins, 1972), serial position probe recall (Avons, Wright, & Pammer, 1994), supraspan list learning (Tehan & Tolan, 2007), and complex span (Tehan, Hendry, & Kocinski, 2001).…”

Section: Word Length In Forward and Backward Serial Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case where word length and direction of recall have been studied together in the same experiment (Bireta et al, 2010;Surprenant et al, 2011), the task involved an order reconstruction task in which the items on each list were presented after study and participants used a computer mouse to select the items in the order in which they had occurred. The participants did not have to retrieve the items from memory, but only the memory for the order of those items.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Word length and age influences on forward and backward immediate serial recall

Baker

Tehan

2011

Mem Cogn

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The present research is aimed at understanding the processes involved in short-term memory and how they interact with age. Specifically, word length effects were examined under forward serial recall, backward serial recall, and item recognition tasks, with performance being interpreted within an item-order theoretical framework. The interaction of age, word length, and direction of recall was examined in two experiments, the first of which confirmed that the word length was present with forward recall and absent with backward recall. In addition, age effects were stronger in backward recall than in forward recall. In the second experiment, an item-order trade-off methodology was utilized with backward recall. When order memory was required, there was no word length effect and strong age effects. When memory was tested via an item recognition test, there was a reverse word length effect and no age effect. While word length effects can be interpreted within the item-order framework, age effects cannot.Keywords Short-term memory . Word length . Foward recall . Backward recall . Aging Immediate forward serial recall of short lists of words is influenced by the length of the to-be-remembered words, such that lists of short words are better recalled in order than lists of long words (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). The word length effect has been seen as one of the benchmark phenomena of short-term recall that models of short-term memory must account for. However, almost all theory development has occurred in the context of forward serial recall, and very little attention has been devoted to explaining performance on backward recall, and where it has been addressed (Page & Norris, 1998), it has been assumed that the same structures and processes that underpin forward recall also support backward recall. Recently, this assumption has proved to be untenable in that many of the benchmark effects of forward recall, including the word length effect, are eliminated or severely attenuated in backward recall (Bireta, Fry, Jalbert, Neath, Surprenant, Tehan, & Tolan, 2010). Thus, one of the aims of the present experiments was to understand why the word length effect differs for backward and forward recall.The second aim of the present study had to do with understanding age differences in short-term memory performance. Again, most of the focus in aging effects in short-term memory has concentrated upon forward serial recall, with very little research being conducted using backward recall. If forward and backward recall are not supported by the same mechanisms and processes, aging effects may well differ for forward and backward recall. At the very least, examining backward recall will provide additional empirical evidence with which to explore agerelated influences on short-term memory. Word length in forward and backward serial recallIn exploring word length effects, it appears that two forms of the effect need to be considered: the time-based effect and the syllable-based effect. The time-based effect refers to...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Word Length In Forward and Backward Serial Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Word Length In Forward and Backward Serial Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Word length and age influences on forward and backward immediate serial recall

Baker

Tehan

2011

Mem Cogn

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When does length cause the word length effect?

Jalbert¹,

Neath²,

Bireta³

et al. 2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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124

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The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining evidence for time-based decay. However, previous studies investigating this effect have confounded length with orthographic neighborhood size. In the present study, Experiments 1A and 1B revealed typical effects of length when short and long words were equated on all relevant dimensions previously identified in the literature except for neighborhood size. In Experiment 2, consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) words with a large orthographic neighborhood were better recalled than were CVC words with a small orthographic neighborhood. In Experiments 3 and 4, using two different sets of stimuli, we showed that when short (1-syllable) and long (3-syllable) items were equated for neighborhood size, the word length effect disappeared. Experiment 5 replicated this with spoken recall. We suggest that the word length effect may be better explained by the differences in linguistic and lexical properties of short and long words rather than by length per se. These results add to the growing literature showing problems for theories of memory that include decay offset by rehearsal as a central feature.

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Concreteness effects in short-term memory: A test of the item-order hypothesis.

Roche

Tolan

Tehan

2011

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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The following experiments explore word length and concreteness effects in short-term memory within an item-order processing framework. This framework asserts order memory is better for those items that are relatively easy to process at the item level. However, words that are difficult to process benefit at the item level for increased attention/resources being applied. The prediction of the model is that differential item and order processing can be detected in episodic tasks that differ in the degree to which item or order memory are required by the task. The item-order account has been applied to the word length effect such that there is a short word advantage in serial recall but a long word advantage in item recognition. The current experiment considered the possibility that concreteness effects might be explained within the same framework. In two experiments, word length (Experiment 1) and concreteness (Experiment 2) are examined using forward serial recall, backward serial recall, and item recognition. These results for word length replicate previous studies showing the dissociation in item and order tasks. The same was not true for the concreteness effect. In all three tasks concrete words were better remembered than abstract words. The concreteness effect cannot be explained in terms of an item-order trade off.

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Backward serial recall and benchmark effects of working memory

Cited by 3 publications

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Word length and age influences on forward and backward immediate serial recall

Word length and age influences on forward and backward immediate serial recall

When does length cause the word length effect?

Concreteness effects in short-term memory: A test of the item-order hypothesis.

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