Schedules of presentation and temporal distinctiveness in human memory.

Neath, Ian; Crowder, Robert G.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.16.2.316

Cited by 116 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(63 reference statements)

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“…A second possibility is that the longer STM span in speakers might be due to differences in the retention of serial order information across modalities 37,38 . Assessments of capacity limits in STM are traditionally conducted using forward serial recall tasks (such as the digit span task), in which correct recall requires producing items in the order of presentation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short-term memory span: insights from sign language

et al. 2004

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Short-term memory (STM), or the ability to hold information in mind for a few seconds, is thought to be limited in its capacity to about 7 ± 2 items. Notably, the average STM capacity when using American Sign Language (ASL) rather than English is only 5 ± 1 items. Here we show that, contrary to previous interpretations, this difference cannot be attributed to phonological factors, item duration or reduced memory abilities in deaf people. We also show that, despite this difference in STM span, hearing speakers and deaf ASL users have comparable working memory resources during language use, indicating similar abilities to maintain and manipulate linguistic information. The shorter STM span in ASL users therefore confirms the view that the spoken span of 7 ± 2 is an exception, probably owing to the reliance of speakers on auditory-based rather than visually based representations in linguistic STM, and calls for adjustments in the norms used with deaf individuals.Working memory refers to the capacity-limited ability to maintain and manipulate information relevant to an ongoing task. Over the years, a large number of studies have focused on the part of working memory dedicated to short-term maintenance of information, which is known as STM. As reports have documented a significant relationship between the size of the STM capacity for linguistic material and language abilities (for review, see refs. 1,2 ), much work has been conducted to uncover the mechanisms underlying the STM capacity limit. One of the most common measures of capacity limits in STM is the digit span task 3 , where subjects must repeat lists of digits in the same order as they are presented (i.e., forward serial recall). The number of digits to be recalled is progressively increased, and the STM span is defined as the longest sequence reported correctly. As noted in a seminal study in 1956 by Miller 4 , our ability to process information in such short-term memory tasks has a capacity limit of seven plus or minus two items. The 'magical number' of 7 ± 2 has been widely confirmed as the capacity limit in STM since this early work.However, the view that 7 ± 2 is the standard capacity of STM has been recently questioned. When non-nameable materials are used, the span of STM drops to four or five items 5 (for review, see ref. 6 ). It has been proposed that a STM span of 7 ± 2 is the exception rather than the rule. One hypothesis is that the exceptionally high STM span of 7 ± 2 is specific to linguistic material and derives from the ability of humans to chunk linguistic information 6 . An alternative possibility, however, is that the exceptionally high STM span of 7 ± 2 might be an effect of modality, arising from greater STM capacity for encoding serial information in auditory STM as compared to visual STM. In the present studies, we examined STM span in native users of ASL, which offers a unique opportunity to separate the contributions of language versus modality to STM capacity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short-term memory span: insights from sign language

et al. 2004

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“…S2), suggesting that rehearsal during study, per se, is unlikely to account for our findings. Although rehearsal is one of the hypothesized mechanisms underlying primacy, we recognize that other factors, such as enhanced attention to early list items (39,41), may also contribute to primacy. Nonetheless, it is clear that the mechanisms underlying the primacy effect are unrelated to the neural contiguity effect we observe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Manning

Polyn

Baltuch³

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

214

223

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Psychological theories of memory posit that when people recall a past event, they not only recover the features of the event itself, but also recover information associated with other events that occurred nearby in time. The events surrounding a target event, and the thoughts they evoke, may be considered to represent a context for the target event, helping to distinguish that event from similar events experienced at different times. The ability to reinstate this contextual information during memory search has been considered a hallmark of episodic, or event-based, memory. We sought to determine whether context reinstatement may be observed in electrical signals recorded from the human brain during episodic recall. Analyzing electrocorticographic recordings taken as 69 neurosurgical patients studied and recalled lists of words, we uncovered a neural signature of context reinstatement. Upon recalling a studied item, we found that the recorded patterns of brain activity were not only similar to the patterns observed when the item was studied, but were also similar to the patterns observed during study of neighboring list items, with similarity decreasing reliably with positional distance. The degree to which individual patients displayed this neural signature of context reinstatement was correlated with their tendency to recall neighboring list items successively. These effects were particularly strong in temporal lobe recordings. Our findings show that recalling a past event evokes a neural signature of the temporal context in which the event occurred, thus pointing to a neural basis for episodic memory.EEG | electrocorticography | oscillations | free recall | contiguity T he pivotal distinction between memory for facts (semantic memory) and memory for episodes or experiences (episodic memory) has been argued to reflect, at least in part, the reinstatement of a gradually changing context representation that reflects not only external conditions, but also an ever-changing internal context state (1, 2). According to this view, the unique quality of episodic memory is that in remembering an episode, we partially recover its associated mental context, and that this context information conveys some sense of when the experience took place, in terms of its relative position along our autobiographical time line.A number of laboratory memory tasks rely on episodic memory, including experimenter-cued tasks (e.g., item recognition and cued recall) and self-cued tasks (e.g., free recall). Performing these episodic memory tasks requires distinguishing the current list item from the rest of one's experience. According to early theories of episodic memory (e.g., 3, 4), context representations are composed of many features that fluctuate from moment to moment, gradually drifting through a multidimensional feature space. These contextual features may reflect environmental cues, recently studied items, participants' internal mental states, or may evolve randomly over time. During recall, the context representation forms part of th...

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“…Brown, Neath, & Chater, 2007;Glenberg & Swanson, 1986;Neath & Crowder, 1990;Neath, 1993;Unsworth, Heitz, & Parks, 2008). In analogy to the well-documented difficulties for identifying (but not detecting) items in crowded visual displays (e.g., Whitney & Levi, 2011), the all-or-none pattern of performance might be due to retrieval processes that find it hard to correctly identify a target item among crowded memory representations.…”

Section: This Is Illustrated Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In subitizing and multiple object tracking, performance might impaired if the receptive fields of the objects are too close in space (Franconeri et al, 2013); in memory, interference might arise when the "receptive fields" of the memory representations are too close together in representational space of the relevant features (that might include some form of context memory as in distinctiveness theories; e.g., Brown et al, 2007;Glenberg & Swanson, 1986;Neath & Crowder, 1990;Neath, 1993;Unsworth et al, 2008).…”

Section: The Role Of Interference In Other Cognitive Capacity Limitatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

Endress

Szabó

2017

Psychological Review

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. However, the origins of these capacity limitations are debated, and generally attributed to active, attentional processes. Here, we show that the existence of interference among items in memory mathematically guarantees fixed and limited capacity limits under very general conditions, irrespective of any processing assumptions. Assuming that interference (i) increases with the number of interfering items and (ii) brings memory performance to chance levels for large numbers of interfering items, capacity limits are a simple function of the relative influence of memorization and interference. In contrast, we show that time-based memory limitations do not lead to fixed memory capacity limitations that are independent of the timing properties of an experiment. We show that interference can mimic both slot-like and continuous resource-like memory limitations, suggesting that these types of memory performance might not be as different as commonly believed. We speculate that slot-like WM limitations might arise from crowding-like phenomena in memory when participants have to retrieve items. Further, based on earlier research on parallel attention and enumeration, we suggest that crowding-like phenomena might be a common reason for the three major cognitive capacity limitations. As suggested by Miller (1956) and Cowan (2001), these capacity limitations might thus arise due to a common reason, even though they likely rely on distinct processes. Permanent repository link:

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Schedules of presentation and temporal distinctiveness in human memory.

Cited by 116 publications

References 29 publications

Short-term memory span: insights from sign language

Short-term memory span: insights from sign language

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

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