Modality, concreteness, and set-size effects in a free reconstruction of order task

Abstract

Wouldinforming subjects which items were presented on the current list remove effects of presentation modality, concreteness, and set size in a long-term free reconstruction of order task? In Experiment 1,a typical modality effect was found: memory for the fmal item in a list was enhanced when the item was presented auditorily rather than visually. In Experiment 2, order memory was better for concrete than for abstract items. And in Experiment 3, order memory was better when the same six items were presented on every trial than when a unique set of six items was presented. In all conditions in all experiments, the to-be-remembered items were given to the subject at test. These results suggest that contrary to a popular assumption, the reconstruction of order task does not provide a functionally pure measure of order memory.Accurately reproducing the order ofa list of items or set ofevents requires remembering two different kinds of information: information about the identity of each item, and information about the presentation order (Crowder, 1976;Healy, 1974). In the typical recall task, such as serial recall, these two sources of information are confounded and cannot be easily separated. In an attempt to eliminate such confounds, some researchers have adopted a task known as reconstruction of order (e.g., Healy, Fendrich, Cunningham, & Till, 1987;Nairne, 1991Nairne, , 1992Nairne & Neumann, 1993).In this task, a series of items is presented, and at test the same items are presented again, either in a new random order or in alphabetical order. Presumably, all relevant item information is available to the subject, who is now free to indicate the original presentation order. Typically, subjects are free to reconstruct the order in any manner they choose; for example, a subject might choose to indicate which item occurred in Position 5 first, and then indicate which item occurred in Position 1 second, and so forth. This free reconstruction of order task may be contrasted with serial reconstruction of order, which requires the subject to indicate which item occurred in Position 1 first, which item occurred in Position 2 second, and so on. Because all necessary item information is given to the subject at the time of test, the free reconstruction of order task "is typically seen as a pure test of position or order memory" (Whiteman, Nairne, & Serra, 1994, p. 276). The three experiments reported here demonstrate that functionally a free reconstruction of order task is not necessarily a pure measure of order memory: Even when subjects are informed of the I thank Aimee M. Surprenant for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript, James S.

Semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory: Are pleasant words easier to remember than neutral words in serial recall and serial recognition?

“…There was a significant main effect of word pleasantness in favor of pleasant words [F(1,23) do not involve a redintegration process (Gathercole et al, 2001;Walker & Hulme, 1999), the pleasantness effect observed in immediate serial recall should disappear. If, on the other hand, serial recognition tasks do call upon a redintegration process, as some other theorists assume (Neath, 1997), the pleasantness effect should still occur. Finally, predictions based on psycholinguistic models of STM also state that a pleasantness effect will occur in recognition tasks.…”

“…In this sense, the serial recognition task not only brings item order to bear, but also may involve a redintegration process whenever the mental representation of the list has deteriorated. In this view, semantic factors are thus likely to affect the quality of the internal representation of the list items at testing time and, as a result, should have an impact on serial recognition performance (see Neath, 1997, for a similar argument based on a free reconstruction-of-order task).…”

Part—set cuing of order information: Implications for associative theories of serial order memory

“…Crowder, 1979;Nairne, 1990). Such reconstruction tests are generally assumed to provide a better overall measure of position memory, as compared with serial recall, although even reconstruction cannot be considered to be a pure measure of position memory (see Nairne & Neumann, 1993;Neath, 1997).…”

Memory and judgment bias in retrospective evaluations

“…the items presented in the last positions: Lists presented aurally generate a significantly larger recency effect Earlier items are recalled at a similar level, regardless of modality of presentation. These findings are rather reliable; they have been replicated with a variety of stimuli and with different memory tasks (e.g., Crowder, 1986;Glenberg, 1984;Neath, 1997) As in Experiments 1 to 3, Experiment 4 involved presenting lists of words that participants had to assess for pleasantness. The rationale supporting this choice of material was again twofold: first, it was possible to match negative (distinctive) and neutral (background) items along features that could be affecting memory at the retrieval stage, hence potentially distorting the underlying relationships between memory and judgment measures.…”