The role of semantic information in short-term memory

Wetherick, N. E.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(75)80025-9

Cited by 22 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Neath (1997) used closed lists comprising items repeatedly sampled from color names (Bblack,^Bblue,B brown,^Bgreen,^Bred,^and Bwhite^), whereas the open lists comprised unrelated words. This is important, given the evidence that lists containing categorically related items are generally remembered better than lists containing unrelated items (Poirier & Saint-Aubin, 1995;Wetherick, 1975). In this regard, it seems that the closed-versus-open list manipulation used by Neath (1997) was confounded with semantic relatedness, which may have produced the pattern in his data.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We carried out a series of experiments on verbal short-term memory for lists of words. In the first experiment, participants were tested via immediate serial recall, and word frequency and list set size were manipulated. With closed lists, the same set of items was repeatedly sampled, and with open lists, no item was presented more than once. In serial recall, effects of word frequency and set size were found. When a serial reconstruction-of-order task was used, in a second experiment, robust effects of word frequency emerged, but set size failed to show an effect. The effects of word frequency in order reconstruction were further examined in two final experiments. The data from these experiments revealed that the effects of word frequency are robust and apparently are not exclusively indicative of output processes. In light of these findings, we propose a multiple-mechanisms account in which word frequency can influence both retrieval and preretrieval processes.Keywords Serial recall . Reconstruction of order . Verbal short-term memory . RedintegrationOne of the most well-known techniques for studying verbal short-term memory is to present a short list of words to a person and then get the person to report back the words in the order in which they were presented. This is known as the immediate serial-recall task. To perform well in the task, participants must remember both the actual words (i.e., the items) and the order in which the words occurred. Many models of short-term memory, as defined relative to immediate serial recall, incorporate distinct mechanisms for maintaining the two types of information (e.g., Brown, Neath, & Chater, 2007;Brown, Preece, & Hulme, 2000;Burgess & Hitch, 1992;Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2002;Henson, 1998;Page & Norris, 1998), and it has been suggested that different brain regions are involved in dealing with these two forms of memory (Majerus, 2009). In this vein, attempts have been made to establish whether different factors differentially influence memory for item versus order information. For example, it has often been suggested that the deleterious effect of having similar-sounding words within a list selectively disrupts memory for the order of the items (e.g., Baddeley, 1986).In order to align the effects of other variables with the operations of specific mechanisms in models of memory, other tasks have also been used, and the present concerns are with something known as the order reconstruction task. In this task, the to-be-remembered (TBR) words that have just been presented are re-presented at test in a new random order, and the participant attempts to reconstruct the order of the words' presentation. A simple assumption is that the order reconstruction task is nothing other than a test of item order information, or, as Whiteman, Nairne, and Serra (1994) stated, the reconstruction task Bprovides a relatively pure index of position memory^ (pp. 276-277).To investigate such a possibility, Whiteman et al. (1994) manipulated word frequency-a variable that reflects item k...

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A related argument has been put forward by Wetherick (1975Wetherick ( , 1976Wetherick & Alexander, 1977) who demonstrated that when items are drawn from a single semantic category, immediate verbal recall is better than when items are drawn from several different categories. That is, the semantic category could act as a cue for recall.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Group aggregates and individual reliability: The case of verbal short-term memory

et al. 1996

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two experiments examined the generalizability of the effects of word length and phonological similarity with visual and auditory presentation in immediate verbal serial ordered recall. In Experiment 1, data were collected from 251 adult volunteers drawn from a broad cross-section of the normal population. Word length and phonological similarity in both presentation modes significantly influenced the group means. However, 43% of the subjects failed to show at least one of the effects, and the likelihood that effects appeared was highly correlated with verbal memory span. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects of the original sample were retested, 20 of whom had failed to show one or more effects in Experiment 1. Whether or not an effect had appeared for individual subjects on the first test session was a poor predictor of whether the effect would appear on retest. Finally,an analysis of subject reports demonstrated that the patterns of experimental data could be accounted for in part by the strategies that subjects reported using, and the effect of strategy was independent of the effect of span. The implications of these findings for theories of verbal short-term memory are discussed.Current views as to the characteristics of verbal shortterm memory owe much to the discovery and exploration of the effects on immediate serial ordered recall of word length and phonological similarity. The word-length effect refers to the tendency for normal adult subjects to have more difficulty in immediate serial ordered recall of a sequence oflong words (e.g., university, aluminium, hippopotamus, refrigerator) than in that of a sequence of short words (e.g., scroll, switch, zinc, maths). The phonological similarity effect arises from the relative difficulty in serial ordered recall of phonologically similar items (e.g., man, mad, map, mat) compared with recall ofa sequence of items that are phonologically distinct (e.g., day, boy, sup,few). Word-length and phonological similarity effects appear whether the subjects read or listen to the word sequence for recall.These are robust effects that have been replicated widely with a range of materials using groups of normal subjects (e.g., Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975; Caplan, Ro-Part ofthe work on which this paper is based was supported by a travel grant given to the first author from the Trustees of the journal Brain. We are grateful to Alan Baddeley for very helpful discussions on this topic, and to Marc Marschark for useful discussions on the incidence of head injury in the college population. We are also grateful to Nelson Cowan

show abstract

“…The advantage of the category-clustering paradigm, over free recall of lists comprising items drawn from a single semantic category, is that it yields a measure of semantic processing at test, indexed by the degree to which the responses are organized by semantic category (Bousfield, 1953;Tulving, 1968). The paradigm, therefore, provides an opportunity to analyse how pre-existing conceptual relationships, or semantic associations, guide the RUNNING HEAD: BOUNDARIES OF SEMANTIC DISTRACTION 5 encoding and retrieval of episodic information, in contrast to (for instance) the classic serial recall paradigm wherein the participants typically recall relatively short lists in order of presentation and for which category-clustering would rather harm than facilitate recall (Wetherick, 1975).The novel characteristic of the current research is that it investigates whether: 1) the encoding-storage stage, or the retrieval stage of the task, is the most sensitive to semantic auditory distraction; 2) semantic auditory distraction is modulated by the linguistic-coherence of the irrelevant material (i.e., whether it is possible to identify a distracting 'unit' such as the individual lexical-semantic item, or whether distraction is attributable to the processing and representation of the syntactical structure of the irrelevant material/transitional properties between lexical-semantic items); and 3) the output-dominance of the target and of the distracting category-exemplars, respectively, modulates the magnitude of semantic auditory distraction. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundaries of semantic distraction: Dominance and lexicality act at retrieval

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction.Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1) and occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech is discussed.Keywords: Semantic Auditory Distraction, Selective Attention, Interference-by-process, Semantic-Category Clustering RUNNING HEAD: BOUNDARIES OF SEMANTIC DISTRACTION 3There is something special about to-be-ignored background speech. For instance, natural speech is more detrimental to reading comprehension than reversed speech (Oswald, Tremblay, & Jones, 2000) and natural speech is more detrimental to memory of prose than aircraft noise (Sörqvist, 2010). Moreover, background conversation is often a source of complaint, annoyance and self-reported distraction (Evans & Johnson, 2000;Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, & Brill, 1994;Witterseh, Wyon, & Clausen, 2004).With the exception of its effect on serial short-term memory (Buchner, Irmen, & Erdfelder, 1996;Jones & Macken, 1993;Jones, Madden, & Miles, 1992;Jones, Miles, & Page, 1990;Marsh, Hughes, & Jones, 2008, 2009, speech is invariably the most distracting type of background sound (Marsh & Jones, 2010;Sörqvist, 2010), especially when the task entails processing of meaning (Beaman, 2004;Bell, Buchner, & Mund, 2008;Jones et al., 1990;Marsh, Hughes, & Jones, 2008, 2009Marsh, Beaman, Hughes, & Jones, 2012;Martin et al., 1988;Neely & LeCompte, 1999;Oswald, Tremblay, & Jones, 2000;Sörqvist, Marsh, & Jahncke, 2010;Sörqvist, Nöstl, & Halin, 2012). For instance, recall of a visually-presented list of items taken from the same semantic category (e.g., Fruit) is more impaired when categorically related items (e.g., other Fruit) are spoken in the background in comparison with categorically unrelated items (e.g., Tools). This between-sequence semantic similarity effect is easily replicable (e.g., Sörqvist et al., 2010). However, it appears to necessitate a task instruction that permits and emphasises processing of meaning. The effect is readily observed when the requirement is to free recall to-be-remembered items but fails to materialise when the task instruction emphasises recall in serial order whereby, in contrast to free recall, the processing of meaning plays a much more RUNNING HEAD: BOUNDARIES OF SEMANTIC DISTRACTION 4 subservient role see also Marsh, Vachon, & Jones, 2008). Although effects of the semantic similarity between the to-be-ignored background speech and t...

show abstract

The role of semantic information in short-term memory

Cited by 22 publications

References 17 publications

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory

Serial reconstruction of order and serial recall in verbal short-term memory

Group aggregates and individual reliability: The case of verbal short-term memory

Boundaries of semantic distraction: Dominance and lexicality act at retrieval

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About