Serial position and set size in short-term memory: The time course of recognition.

Abstract

Subjects viewed sequentially presented lists of 3-6 words, which were followed by a recognition probe. Memory retrieval speed (dynamics) and strength were measured in an interruption speedaccuracy trade-off (SAT) procedure and a collateral reaction time (RT) procedure. In SAT, item strengths depended on serial position, but only two retrieval speeds were observed: a fast rate for the last item in the study list (a case of immediate repetition between study and test) and a slow rate for all other items that was independent of serial position and set size. Serial-positiondependent strengths and set-size-dependent criterion shifts accounted for standard RT patterns that have been taken as evidence for serial scanning in short-term memory. Summary of ExperimentsWe examined retrieval in immediate memory for short lists, using speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) and comparable reaction time (RT) paradigms. We replicated MonselFs (1978) demonstration of strong recency or serial position effects on RT, which average to produce linear, parallel set size functions for both positive and negative trials. In SAT, memory strength or probability (indexed by asymptotic accuracy) and retrieval speed (indexed by rate and intercept) were separately estimated for full retrieval functions. An SAT experiment showed that the serial position effects in RT are paralleled by analogous effects on asymptotic memory strength. The dynamics of retrieval (rate and intercept) were equal for all serial positions except the most recent and were independent of set size. There was a large speeding in retrieval when the test item was the same as the last list member (immediate repetition), which is a replication of a similar finding by Wickelgren, Corbett, and Dosher (1980) in long lists. Thus observed SAT rate differences between set sizes when serial position data were pooled reflected the relative proportion of immediate repetitions in different set sizes. Set size per se had no effect on retrieval speed, although different serial position mixes resulted in different asymptotic accuracy. The immediate repetition effect did not depend on a physical match between the last list element and the test. All results were replicated in a second SAT experiment, in which we presented list items in lowercase letters and test items in uppercase letters. In that experiment we also examined the effect of recency on negative trials. Recent negatives (items presented in the immediately previous memory list) yielded higher false alarms than did distant negatives, especially early in retrieval. Serial-scanning

A Dynamic Approach to Recognition Memory

“…Although it was originally argued that a serial search process was necessary to explain these results (Sternberg, 1966;Atkinson & Juola, 1974), a variety of parallel matching models provide excellent fits to this paradigm as well (Ratcliff, 1978;Hockley & Murdock, 1987;Nosofsky et al, 2011;Donkin & Nosofsky, 2012b;. At least at lags greater than one, there is no evidence for difference in retrieval dynamics, only for differences in asymptotic performance, consistent with the idea that, for the most part, recognition even from short lists is based on a parallel matching process rather than serial search (McElree & Dosher, 1989). …”

Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension

“…This mechanism is possible only under a content-addressable system, where antecedent representations are elicited from memory via their content, and are directly accessible via the cues provided at the retrieval site. In this architecture, representations with varying degrees of distinctiveness are recovered in equal time, without a search (McElree and Dosher, 1989).…”

Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

“…For example, in an item-recognition task in which a list of items is followed by a probe to be judged present in or absent from the list of items, it is typically observed that RTs to the last-presented item are faster than to any other item of the list (e.g., Burrows & Okada, 1971;McElree & Dosher, 1989;Nee & Jonides, 2008;Öztekin, Davachi, & McElree, 2010). The idea is that, at the end of the memory list, the final item is maintained in the focus of attention, resulting in speeded responses to probes that match that item.…”