Reexamining the phonological similarity effect in immediate serial recall: The roles of type of similarity, category cuing, and item recall

Abstract

Study of the phonological similarity effect (PSE) in immediate serial recall (ISR) has produced a conflicting body of results. Five experiments tested various theoretical ideas that together may help integrate these results. Experiments 1 and 2 tested alternative accounts that explain the effect of phonological similarity on item recall in terms of feature overlap, linguistic structure, or serial order. In each experiment, the participants' ISR was assessed for rhyming, alliterative, and similar nonrhyming/ nonalliterative lists. The results were consistent with the predictions of the serial order account, with item recall being higher for rhyming than for alliterative lists and higher for alliterative than for similar nonrhyming/nonalliterative lists. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that these item recall differences are reduced when list items repeat across lists. Experiment 5 employed rhyming and dissimilar onesyllable and two-syllable lists to demonstrate that recall for similar (rhyming) lists can be better than that for dissimilar lists even in a typical ISR task in which words are used, providing a direct reversal of the classic PSE. These and other previously published results are interpreted and integrated within a proposed theoretical framework that offers an account of the PSE.

Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

“…People often substitute whole items from other lists they have previously encountered (Henson, 1998), and add items that weren't present in any stimulus list. Furthermore, research has shown that the phonological similarity influences both sublexical and list-wise serial ordering (Gupta et al, 2005). In the present study, tongue-twister effects were observed not just for substitutions but also for item omissions in the second and third experiments.…”

“…Researchers have used one of the classic findings in verbal working memory, the phonological similarity effect, as a means of testing the functional relationships between language and working memory (Nimmo & Roodenrys, 2004). Past research has demonstrated that memory for the order of items sharing phonological features is worse than items which do not share these features, although nonordered memory for the items themselves is generally not affected or may be enhanced (Fallon, Groves, & Tehan, 1999;Gupta, Lipinski, & Aktunc, 2005;Nimmo & Roodenrys, 2004). Critical to the present study, the location of the feature overlap influences people's performance.…”

“…Critical to the present study, the location of the feature overlap influences people's performance. Both Nimmo and Roodenrys (2004) and Gupta et al (2005) demonstrated that relative to nonoverlapping lists, when phonological overlap occurs within the rhyme unit of a syllable (e.g. the /aet/ sound in the list cat, bat, hat, etc.…”

Interference between storage and processing in working memory: Feature overwriting, not similarity-based competition

“…Phonological similarity invariably impairs memory for order, but it has often been found to improve memory for items, in particular when similar items shared a common rhyme (Fallon, Groves, & Tehan, 1999;Gupta, Lipinski, & Aktunc, 2005;Tehan, Hendry, & Kocinski, 2001). Semantic similarity has been found to improve item memory while having no effect on order memory (Saint-Aubin & Poirier, 1999).…”

Interpreting potential markers of storage and rehearsal: Implications for studies of verbal short-term memory and neuropsychological cases

“…This may be because under such conditions participants adopt a strategy other than rehearsal, such as using the similarity between phonologically similar items as a cue to item identity (Fallon et al, 1999;Gupta, Lipinski, & Aktunc, 2005), or making use of semantic information that might be richer for long than for short words (Campoy & Baddeley, 2008). However, detection of the use of alternative strategies can only rely on positive evidence for the use of such strategies, such as effects of visual similarity (e.g., Logie et al, 2015;Saito et al, 2008) or semantic similarity (e.g., Baddeley, 1966;Campoy & Baddeley, 2008).…”