Does length or neighborhood size cause the word length effect?

Abstract

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.

Short-term memory, working memory, and syntactic comprehension in aphasia

“…The WLE has been interpreted as a reflection of rehearsal (Baddeley et al, 1975; for discussion, see Caplan et al, 1992; Service, 1998; Tolan and Tehan, 2005; Zhang and Feng, 1990; Lovatt et al, 2000), and we tentatively suggest that these results are evidence that rehearsal is not widely used in syntactically based comprehension. The WLE also results from lexical neighborhood density effects (Jalbert et al, 2011), which leads us to suggest that lexical items are retrieved in syntactically based comprehension without activating their entire network of associations (Vitevitch et al, 2011). …”

The many faces of working memory and short-term storage

“…This group at first seems to include Engle, but his work with Unsworth reminds him that they have incorporated long-term memory retrieval into the new account of WM task performance (Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Finally, theorists who suspect that there is no kind of distinct shortterm memory or WM (e.g., Crowder, 1982;Jalbert, Neath, & Surprenant, 2011;Nairne, 2002) find the endeavor to be misguided because if there is no regular WM, all alleged WM is actually part of long-term memory, so that the term long-term WM is superfluous and distracting; better just to speak of recent retrieval cues. Nairne and Neath (2001) seem to agree with Ericsson and Kintsch inasmuch as they described Blongterm memory span,^but actually they did so as a reductio ad absurdum argument against the existence of a distinct shortterm memory.…”

Set size and long-term memory/lexical effects in immediate serial recall: Testing the impurity principle

“…Subsequent studies quickly confirmed the influence of longterm memory and lexical factors on determining span (for an early review, see Blankenship, 1938; see also Crowder, 1976;Surprenant & Neath, 2009a, 2009b. Space precludes a listing of all such factors, but they include phonological neighborhood size (Roodenrys, Hulme, Lethbridge, Hinton, & Nimmo, 2002), orthographic neighborhood size (Jalbert, Neath, & Surprenant, 2011), semantic similarity (Saint-Aubin, Ouellette, & Poirier, 2005), pleasantness (Monnier & Syssau, 2008), word frequency (Roodenrys & Quinlan, 2000), and concreteness (Walker & Hulme, 1999). In this article, we focus on the latter two.…”