Visual similarity effects in immediate verbal serial recall

Abstract

The role of visual working memory in temporary serial retention of verbal information was examined in four experiments on immediate serial recall of words that varied in visual similarity and letters that varied in the visual consistency between upper and lower case. Experiments 1 and 2 involved words that were either visually similar (e.g. fly, cry, dry; hew, new, few) or were visually distinct (e.g. guy, sigh, lie; who, blue, ewe). Experiments 3 and 4 involved serial recall of both letter and case from sequences of letters chosen such that the upper- and lower-case versions were visually similar, for example Kk, Cc, Zz, Ww, or were visually dissimilar, for example Dd, Hh, Rr, Qq. Hence in the latter set, case information was encoded in terms of both the shape and the size of the letters. With both words and letters, the visually similar items resulted in poorer recall both with and without concurrent articulatory suppression. This visual similarity effect was robust and was replicated across the four experiments. The effect was not restricted to any particular serial position and was particularly salient in the recall of letter case. These data suggest the presence of a visual code for retention of visually presented verbal sequences in addition to a phonological code, and they are consistent with the use of a visual temporary memory, or visual "cache", in verbal serial recall tasks.

Phonological similarity and orthographic similarity affect probed serial recall of Chinese characters

“…The more confusable orthographic codes of the PsOs than of the PsOd characters, as evidenced by the objective index and subjective ratings of visual similarity, should still have resulted in worse memory performance in the former than in the latter condition. The findings of Experiment 2 ostensibly conflict with previous results that visually dissimilar words were remembered better than visually similar ones, especially when the pronunciations of these words were similar (e.g., Logie et al, 2000;Saito et al, 2008). The effect of shared phonetic radicals improving rather than hindering the WM of phonologically similar characters with a vertical structure might be due to the fact that the orthography of shared phonetic radicals facilitates character recognition in LTM but creates memory confusion in WM.…”

“…Supporting the hypothesis of the WM model, Logie, Della Sala, Wynn, and Baddeley (2000) reported that immediate serial recall of words with different spellings (e.g., GUY, SIGH, and LIE) was better than that of words with similar spellings (e.g., CRY, DRY, and TRY). Similarly, immediate serial recall of both the identity and case of individual letters that were presented in either upper-or lowercase was better for letters whose upper-and lowercase variants were visually distinct (e.g., Hh, Rr, and Qq) than for letters whose upperand lowercase variants were visually identical except for size (e.g., Ww, Cc, and Kk).…”

“…Although the VSE reported in the previous literature has been assumed to reflect the involvement of the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the WM model (Logie et al, 2000;Saito et al, 2008), the OSE observed in the present study might not result from the same mechanism, because this capacity is conceptualized as being a nonlinguistic buffer that does not connect to the language representations in long-term knowledge (Logie et al, 1990). Instead, the present findings are consistent with the theories of multiple components of verbal WM (e.g., Martin & Romani, 1994;.…”

“…To account for the findings that readers of both alphabetic and logographic languages remembered visually dissimilar words better than visually similar ones, especially when the sounds of these words were similar (e.g., Logie et al, 2000;Saito et al, 2008), it has been assumed that the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the WM model is available to support the retention of verbal materials, especially when the phonological loop is not optimal for memory performance (Logie, 1986(Logie, , 1995Logie, Brockmole, & Jaswal, 2011;Logie, Zucco, & Baddeley, 1990). In other words, the involvement of visual codes in verbal WM is spontaneous and optional, whenever it can be helpful.…”

Central and peripheral components of working memory storage.

“…Undoubtedly, more interference between sets at the time of memory maintenance would be obtained in studies with two stimulus sets of the same kind than with two different kinds (see for example Cowan and Morey, 2007; Oberauer, Lewandowsky, Farrell, Jarrold, & Greaves, 2012). It is of course also possible for visual stimuli to be encoded verbally (e.g., Conrad, 1964) or for verbal stimuli to be encoded visually (e.g., Logie, Della Sala, Wynn, & Baddeley, 2000), which would allow for more interference during maintenance, but any such recoding should be minimized by the presentation of verbal and visual stimuli on the same trial. Still, we used articulatory suppression to avoid verbal rehearsal of either stimulus set.…”