Creating proactive interference in immediate recall: Building a DOG from a DART, a mop, and a FIG

Abstract

Phonemic codes are accorded a privileged role in most current models of immediate serial recall, although their effects are apparent in short-term proactive interference (PI) effects as well. The present research looks at how assumptions concerning distributed representation and distributed storage involving both semantic and phonemic codes might be operationalized to produce PI in a short-term cued recall task. The four experiments reported here attempted to generate the phonemic characteristics of a nonrhyming, interfering foil from unrelated filler items in the same list. PI was observed when a rhyme of the foil was studied or when the three phonemes of the foil were distributed across three studied filler items. The results suggest that items in short-term memory are stored in terms of feature bundles and that all items are simultaneously available at retrieval.Most current models ofimmediate memory are in agreement on two things: first, that speech-based codes playa dominant role in short-term tasks, and second, that these phonemic codes quickly become degraded if rehearsal is prevented. The latter feature ensures that at recall, a target must be produced from an impoverished trace. Consequently, quite a number of current models specify a redintegration or deblurring process in which an item is derived from a fuzzy approximation of that item (Brown & Hulme, 1995;Henson, Norris, Page, & Baddeley, 1996;Lewandowsky & Murdock, 1989; Nairne, 1988Nairne, , 1990Neath & Nairne, 1995;Schweickert, 1993). The specifics of the reconstruction process vary from model to model as a function of representational, storage, and retrieval assumptions.The most obvious instance ofthe interaction ofcoding and reconstructive processes is in the phonemic similarity effect-that is, when items that have similar sound characteristics are mistaken for another, similar item in the list (Baddeley, 1966;Conrad, 1965). Those models that employ localist representations and localist storage-for example, Henson et al. (1996)-explain phonemic confusions by arguing that the short-term episodic trace activates the wrong semantic output node. When distributed representations but localist storage are used, a similar explanation is provided. Nairne (1990), for instance, matched a degraded short-term trace with items in a search set con-

Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

“…In order to provide an additional test of the third prediction that PI would be observed if there was phonemic information for the foil, Tehan and Humphreys (1998) explored whether or not the phonemic features of the foil could be provided by another list item that was a rhyme of the foil. The cued recall task was again used, but with three conditions: the standard control and interference conditions, and an interference condition in which a rhyme of the foil was included in the second block of words.…”

“…Tehan and Humphreys' cue plus codes account predicts when PI will and will not be observed so at face value the latter account is more parsimonious. However, because the capacity of the FOA is four plus or minus one items, it is possible that PI was observed in the Tehan and Humphreys (1998) experiment because a four-item list exceeded the capacity of the FOA for some people or on some trials. The FOA approach would be less tenable if PI could be found with a memory load that was less than four items.…”

Determinants of Short‐term Forgetting: Decay, Retroactive Interference, or Proactive Interference?

“…Some propose that trace degradation is due to decay brought about by the prevention of rehearsal (Baddeley, 1986;Burgess & Hitch, 1992;, or a switch in attention (Cowan, 1993); others attribute degradation to retroactive interference (RI) from other list items (Nairne, 1990;Tehan & Fallon;in press;Tehan & Humphreys, 1998). We want to add proactive interference (PI) to the possible causes of short-term forgetting, and by showing how PI effects change as a function of the type of distractor task employed during a filled retention interval, we hope to evaluate the causes of trace degradation.…”

“…We have recently developed a short-term cued recall task in which PI can easily be manipulated (Tehan & Humphreys, 1995;1998). In this task, participants study a series of trials in which items are presented in blocks of four items with each trial consisting of either one or two blocks.…”

Perceptual specificity of priming for compound words not presented

“…The production of a conjunction word in the present study to some degree resembles the retrieval of a nonstudied word (dog) in immediate category cued recall after the presentation of words that contain the phonemes of that word (dart, mop, and fig;Tehan & Humphreys, 1998), though conceptual cues were absent in the present experiments. Thus, in some circumstances, emergent outcomes (i.e., blends or conjunctions) from interactive effects within some memory models could extend to priming phenomena (see also, e.g., .…”