Serial recall versus recall by categories in short-term memory.

Penney, Catherine G.

doi:10.1037/h0081216

Cited by 2 publications

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Section: Organization By Modalitymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…It seems that the subjects had difficulty ordering items presented to two different sensory modes. A later study (Penney, 1982a) ruled out the possibility that the higher recall with a mode-by-mode report order rather than with strict serial recall was due to some kind of chunking strategy.Penney and Butt (1986) compared the relative importance of temporal adjacency and identity of probe and target modalities in determining the effectiveness of a recall probe. Lists contained 10 digits, with presentation modality changing after every second digit.…”

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Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

1989

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The effects of auditory and visual presentation upon short-term retention of verbal stimuli are reviewed, and a model of the structure of short-term memory is presented. The main assumption of the model is that verbal information presented to the auditory and visual modalities is processed in separate streams that have different properties and capabilities. Auditory items are automatically encoded in both the A (acoustic) code, which, in the absence of subsequent input, can be maintained for some time without deliberate allocation of attention, and a P (phonological) code. Visual items are retained in both the P code and a visual code. Within the auditory stream, successive items are strongly associated; in contrast, in the visual modality, it is simultaneously presented items that are strongly associated. These assumptions about the structure of shortterm verbal memory are shown to account for many of the observed effects of presentation modality. Penney (1975) reviewed the literature on the effects of presentation modality on short-term retention of verbal material and concluded that there were separate stores for auditorily and visually presented information. To emphasize the idea that active processing underlies retention in short-term memory, and to discourage the conceptualization of short-term memory as a warehouse of decaying information, Penney (1980) introduced the term separate processing streams to replace the notion of separate memory stores. Since publication of the review paper, additional work on modality effects has supported the hypothesis of modality separation in the processing of verbal material in short-term memory (the separate-streams hypothesis), and new findings have elucidated the nature of the separate processing streams. The present paper is a review of the literature on modality effects and related phenomena, with the goal of presenting an integrated account in terms of the different properties and capabilities of the separate processing streams. These processing streams are seen to reflect the inherent structure of short-term verbal memory, and not to represent strategic processes.In 1975, the term modality effect referred to the finding that, in short-term memory tasks, auditory presentation almost always resulted in higher recall than did visual presentation. This modality effect was found for the recency part of the serial position curve in immediate free recall and in serial recall, and the auditory superiority was also found in the Peterson distractor task, provided that I would like to thank Donald Broadbent, Robert Crowder, Susan Manning, Bennet Murdock, James Nairne, Lars-Goran Nilsson, Charles Thompson, and Michael Watkins for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. Reprint requests may be addressed to the author, Psychology Department, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland AlB 3X9, Canada. the distraction did not require a long period of vocalization. Overt vocalization of a visually presented list by the subject produced much the sa...

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Section: Organization By Modalitymentioning

confidence: 96%

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confidence: 96%

Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

1989

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Similarity as an organising principle in short-term memory

LeCompte

Watkins

1993

Memory

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The role of stimulus similarity as an organising principle in short-term memory was explored in a series of seven experiments. Each experiment involved the presentation of a short sequence of items that were drawn from two distinct physical classes and arranged such that item class changed after every second item. Following presentation, one item was re-presented as a probe for the 'target' item that had directly followed it in the sequence. Memory for the sequence was considered organised by class if probability of recall was higher when the probe and target were from the same class than when they were from different classes. Such organisation was found when one class was auditory and the other was visual (spoken vs. written words, and sounds vs. pictures). It was also found when both classes were auditory (words spoken in a male voice vs. words spoken in a female voice) and when both classes were visual (digits shown in one location vs. digits shown in another). It is concluded that short-term memory can be organised on the basis of sensory modality and on the basis of certain features within both the auditory and visual modalities.

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Serial recall versus recall by categories in short-term memory.

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

Modality effects and the structure of short-term verbal memory

Similarity as an organising principle in short-term memory

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