Four effects-the word length effect, the irrelevant speech effect, the acoustic confusion effect, and the concurrent articulation effect-have played a prominent role in the development of influential theories of immediate memory. Indeed, accounting for these four findings was one of the motivations for creating the phonological loop component of working memory (Baddeley, 1992), and these effects are seen as key data that computational models of short-term memory must account for (Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008). Despite the numerous studies examining these phenomena, very few studies have examined them using backward recall. To that end, one purpose of the four experiments reported here was to assess whether the four benchmark effects of working memory are observable with backward recall. A second purpose was to test the predictions of two models of memory: Despite their many differences, both the primacy model (Page & Norris, 1998) and the feature model (Nairne, 1990) predict that all four effects should be observed with backward recall. Empirical ReviewWord length effect. The word length effect refers to the finding that lists of short (i.e., one-syllable) words are recalled better than otherwise comparable lists of longer (i.e., multisyllabic) words (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchan an, 1975; for a review, see . The standard paradigm is forward immediate serial recall, but the word length effect is also observable with reconstruction of order (Nairne, Neath, & Serra, 1997), serial recognition (Baddeley, Chincotta, Stafford, & Turk, 2002), free recall (Watkins, 1972), single-item probe recall (Avons, Wright, & Pammer, 1994), and complex span (Tehan, Hendry, & Kocinski, 2001) tests. However, only a small number of studies have examined whether the effect is observable with backward recall.Cowan et al. (1992, Experiment 3) had subjects recall lists of short and long words in both a forward and a backward order, and recall direction was not known until test. However, a straightforward interpretation of the results is difficult, since word length was manipulated within a list (i.e., the first half of the list was short words, the second half long words), and since the lists had five items, there were not equal numbers of short and long items per list. Moreover, the stimuli used have since been shown to be atypical (see, e.g., Neath, Bireta, & Surprenant, 2003). Cowan, Wood, and Borne (1994) Working memory was designed to explain four benchmark memory effects: the word length effect, the irrelevant speech effect, the acoustic confusion effect, and the concurrent articulation effect. However, almost all research thus far has used tests that emphasize forward recall. In four experiments, we examine whether each effect is observable when the items are recalled in reverse order. Subjects did not know which recall direction would be required until the time of test, ensuring that encoding processes would be identical for both recall directions. Contrary to predictions of both the primacy model and the feature model, the benchm...

The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining evidence for time-based decay. However, previous studies investigating this effect have confounded length with orthographic neighborhood size. In the present study, Experiments 1A and 1B revealed typical effects of length when short and long words were equated on all relevant dimensions previously identified in the literature except for neighborhood size. In Experiment 2, consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) words with a large orthographic neighborhood were better recalled than were CVC words with a small orthographic neighborhood. In Experiments 3 and 4, using two different sets of stimuli, we showed that when short (1-syllable) and long (3-syllable) items were equated for neighborhood size, the word length effect disappeared. Experiment 5 replicated this with spoken recall. We suggest that the word length effect may be better explained by the differences in linguistic and lexical properties of short and long words rather than by length per se. These results add to the growing literature showing problems for theories of memory that include decay offset by rehearsal as a central feature.

It is well established that rote rehearsal plays a key role in serial memory for lists of verbal items. Although a great deal of research has informed us about the nature of verbal rehearsal, much less attention has been devoted to rehearsal in serial memory for visual-spatial information. By using the dot task--a visual-spatial analogue of the classical verbal serial recall task--with delayed recall, performance and eyetracking data were recorded in order to establish whether visual-spatial rehearsal could be evidenced by eye movement. The use of eye movement as a form of rehearsal is detectable (Experiment 1), and it seems to contribute to serial memory performance over and above rehearsal based on shifts of spatial attention (Experiments 1 and 2).

Summary:The word length effect, the finding that words that have fewer syllables are recalled better than otherwise comparable words that have more syllables, is one of the benchmark effects that must be accounted for in any model of serial recall, and simulation models of immediate memory rely heavily on the finding. However, previous research has shown that the effect disappears when participants are asked to recall the items in strict backward order.

Jalbert, Neath, Bireta, and Surprenant (2011) suggested that past demonstrations of the word length effect, the finding that words with fewer syllables are recalled better than words with more syllables, included a confound: The short words had more orthographic neighbors than the long words. The experiments reported here test two predictions that would follow if neighborhood size is a more important factor than word length. In Experiment 1, we found that concurrent articulation removed the effect of neighborhood size, just as it removes the effect of word length. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this pattern is also found with nonwords. For Experiment 3, we factorially manipulated length and neighborhood size, and found only effects of the latter. These results are problematic for any theory of memory that includes decay offset by rehearsal, but they are consistent with accounts that include a redintegrative stage that is susceptible to disruption by noise. The results also confirm the importance of lexical and linguistic factors on memory tasks thought to tap shortterm memory.Keywords Memory . Recognition . Serial position effects . Short term memory . Working memory The word length effect, the finding that short words (e.g., lead, pig, grape) are recalled better than long words (e.g., aluminum, elephant, banana), has played a significant role in the development of theories of memory. This effect is the basis of the phonological loop component of working memory (Baddeley, 1992); it has been described as "the best remaining solid evidence" for such a temporary memory subsystem, in which decay is offset by rehearsal (Cowan, 1995, p. 42); and it has been termed a "benchmark finding" that computational models of memory must account for (Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008). We (Jalbert et al., 2011) recently suggested that this effect may not be due to length per se, but rather to the effects of neighborhood size, because previous demonstrations of the word length effect confounded length and neighborhood size. In this article, we test two predictions that arise out of an account that attributes word length effects to neighborhood size rather than to length per se: (1) The neighborhood size effect, like the word length effect, should be eliminated if subjects engage in concurrent articulation. 1 (2) Long items with a large neighborhood size should be recalled better than short items with a small neighborhood size. Word length and working memoryIn the first systematic exploration of the effects of word length, Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975) reported three key results. First, a set of words was created in which the short and long items differed in pronunciation 1 We use the term concurrent articulation rather than the more usual articulatory suppression because the former is a neutral description of what the subject is asked to do. In contrast, the latter term implies a specific effect of the manipulation, and below we argue for a different effect of this manipulation.