Dissimilar items benefit from phonological similarity in serial recall.

Abstract

In short-term serial recall, similar sounding items are remembered less well than items that do not sound alike. This phonological similarity effect has been observed with lists composed only of similar items, and also with lists that mix together similar and dissimilar items. An additional consistent finding has been what the authors call dissimilar immunity, the finding that ordered recall of dissimilar items is the same whether these items occur in pure dissimilar or mixed lists. The authors present 3 experiments that disconfirm these previous findings by showing that dissimilar items on mixed lists are recalled better than their counterparts on pure lists if order errors are considered separately from intrusion errors (Experiment 1), or if intrusion errors are experimentally controlled (Experiments 2 and 3). The memory benefit for dissimilar items on mixed lists poses a challenge for current models of short-term serial recall.

Sequential dependencies in recall of sequences: Filling in the blanks

“…From this perspective, the results of Solway et al (2012) are not problematic, since they speak to processes that are simply beyond the purview of such models. Equally, the results presented here reinforce the conclusion of other authors about the inadequacy of chaining of items as a mechanism supporting short-term memory (Baddeley, 1968;Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2003;Henson, 1996;Henson et al, 1996;Surprenant et al, 2005), while acknowledging that longerterm sequence memory may primarily be driven by a mechanism such as chaining, as suggested by the results of Solway et al However, the results of Grenfell-Essam and Ward (2012) complicate this picture somewhat, since a systematic pattern is not observed for shorter lists when their data are also taken into account. A second possibility is that the building up of a stable representation of a sequence over multiple trials-as in two of the experiments examined by Solway et al (2012)-involves the transition to a chained representation.…”

“…The experiments differed in terms of additional features. Some of the experiments were control conditions for experiments examining phonological similarity effects (Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2003;Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008a). A number of the experiments varied the timing of the presentation of stimuli within or between sequences in order to examine phenomena such as purported temporal isolation effects (Farrell, 2008; Lewandowsky, B r o w n , Wr i g h t , & N i m m o , 2 0 0 6 ; , while others varied the nature and timing of distracting activity following list presentation (Lewandowsky, Geiger, Morrell, & Oberauer, 2010;Lewandowsky, Geiger, & Oberauer, 2008).…”

“…The ratio of such fill-in errors to "infill" errors-where the premature recall of an item drags along with it the following item (D in the above example)-tends to be approximately 2:1 (Henson, 1996;Surprenant et al, 2005). This dependency in serial recall errors, in conjunction with other error dependencies associated with the recall of sequences containing repeated items (e.g., Henson, 1998a) and sequences mixing rhyming and nonrhyming items (Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2003;Henson et al, 1996;Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008a), constitutes strong evidence against chaining models of serial recall.…”

A model linking immediate serial recall, the Hebb repetition effect and the learning of phonological word forms

“…ISR is, in some respects, an ideal task for such computational modelling, given the wide variety of experimental manipulations that have been performed, most prominently within the framework of the working memory model of Baddeley & Hitch (1974) and Baddeley (1986). The data provide solid evidence that a number of factors affect ISR performance, including the phonological similarity of list items (Conrad & Hull 1964;Baddeley 1968;Henson et al 1996;Farrell & Lewandowsky 2003;Page et al 2007 etc. ) and irrelevant sound during list presentation (Colle & Welsh 1976;Salamé & Baddeley 1982, 1986Jones & Macken 1995;Tremblay et al 2000 etc.).…”

From Numerosity to Ordinal Rank: A Gain-Field Model of Serial Order Representation in Cortical Working Memory

“…3D), reflecting a recall advantage for initial items (the primacy effect) and a smaller advantage for the last one or two items (the recency c Rank units with preferred ranks larger than six were included in the model because, given the graded nature of the rank code, such units naturally contribute to the representation of six-item sequences. Farrell and Lewandowsky (2003) for pure lists of phonologically confusable and nonconfusable items, alternating lists with confusable items at odd ranks, and lists of confusable items with one distinctive item ("isolate") at position 2, 4, or 6. Data from the latter list type is summarized by showing recall for isolate items fromallpositionsinonedataseries.C,Correspondingperformancepatternfromthemodel.Parametersaslistedforleftpanels,withϭ 0.08.…”