Serial recall, word frequency, and mixed lists: The influence of item arrangement.

Miller, Leonie M; Roodenrys, Steven

doi:10.1037/a0028470

Cited by 16 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1, where the distinct effects of list composition are readily observed. The patterns for the pure, alternating, and half-list formats replicated those obtained in previous experiments (Hulme et al, 2003;Miller & Roodenrys, 2012), while the novel sequence format was consistent with the half-list condition, in that the convergence of the curves occurred at the point of change of item type. The means for formats collapsed across list types suggested that the variation in the overall level of performance for each condition was small; descriptively, the items in pure lists were recalled the least well (M 0 .535), followed by those in alternating lists (M 0 .541) and then half lists (M 0 .559), while the items in the sequence lists were recalled the most (M 0 .583).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

“…The stimulus sets were those used by Miller and Roodenrys (2012). The two sets of 96 CVC words selected on the basis of frequency ratings (instances per million words of text) were drawn from the Celex database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Van Rijan, 1993).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Miller and Roodenrys (2012) presented the results of experiments using a half-list manipulation originally proposed by Hulme et al (2003) as a clear test of the directionality of associative effects in lists of mixed frequency. Half lists are constructed from the halves of pure lists so that HF and LF items are presented in sequence (HHHLLL and LLLHHH) and match the list composition of alternating lists with three HF and three LF items each.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, the recall for LF items in the second half of the list, observed to be greater than the recall for pure LF lists, could be explained as the benefit afforded to these items by the more efficient speech programming for the first half of the list. One test of this proposal would be to conduct replications of these studies using articulatory suppression; however, Miller and Roodenrys (2012) found that the pattern of the frequency effect in half lists was not altered by suppression. Therefore, if coarticulatory factors play a role in the formation of the effect, they must act at a point prior to subvocal rehearsal.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Conditional recall and the frequency effect in the serial recall task: an examination of item-to-item associativity

Miller

Roodenrys

2012

Mem Cogn

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The frequency effect in short-term serial recall is influenced by the composition of lists. In pure lists, a robust advantage in the recall of high-frequency (HF) words is observed, yet in alternating mixed lists, HF and lowfrequency (LF) words are recalled equally well. It has been argued that the preexisting associations between all list items determine a single, global level of supportive activation that assists item recall. Preexisting associations between items are assumed to be a function of language cooccurrence; HF-HF associations are high, LF-LF associations are low, and mixed associations are intermediate in activation strength. This account, however, is based on results when alternating lists with equal numbers of HF and LF words were used. It is possible that directional association between adjacent list items is responsible for the recall patterns reported. In the present experiment, the recall of three forms of mixed lists-those with equal numbers of HF and LF items and pure lists-was examined to test the extent to which item-to-item associations are present in serial recall. Furthermore, conditional probabilities were used to examine more closely the evidence for a contribution, since correct-in-position scoring may mask recall that is dependent on the recall of prior items. The results suggest that an item-to-item effect is clearly present for early but not late list items, and they implicate an additional factor, perhaps the availability of resources at output, in the recall of late list items.Keywords Short term memory . Language production . RecallIn the context of immediate serial recall, the frequency effect is complex and difficult to explain in straightforward terms Early explanations of the frequency effect in serial recall, motivated by the results from experiments using pure lists, focused on item-specific differences between HF and LF words, consistent with the prevailing explanation of verbal short-term memory (STM) phenomena. For example, the phonological loop (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) was characterized as a serially ordered, speech-based system that was responsible for performance on memory span and serial recall tasks (Baddeley, 1986). It comprised a phonological shortterm store (STS) that retained the short-term traces of items and a subvocal rehearsal mechanism. Traces in the STS were subject to passive decay and consequent degradation unless refreshed by rehearsal in the loop. Wright (1979) demonstrated articulation rate differences between HF and LF words; HF items of the same length are articulated faster than LF words. Accordingly, the frequency effect will manifest from rehearsal rate differences between HF and LF words, since greater rehearsal efficiency leads to superior retention of the shortterm traces on which recall is reliant.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Conditional recall and the frequency effect in the serial recall task: an examination of item-to-item associativity

Miller

Roodenrys

2012

Mem Cogn

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to this co-occurrence hypothesis, when a word is presented in a list its activation spreads to other items in the list via connections between the items in Chapter Eight: The Phonological Neighbourhood Effect on Short-Term Memory for Order: Serial Reconstruction long-term memory. Items that already share strong connections in long-term memory, such as items that co-occur often in language, will have a greater level of pre-existing activation that will assist in recall (Miller & Roodenrys, 2012). The co-occurrence approach bears similarity to the semantic binding hypothesis (Patterson, Graham, & Hodges, 1994) where patterns of phonemes become associated with one another and to a semantic representation due to a high level of co-occurrence between all of these components in speech perception and production.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The phonological neighbourhood effect on short-term memory for order

Clarkson

Roodenrys

Miller

et al. 2016

Memory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Clarkson, Larissa, The phonological neighbourhood effect on short-term memory for order, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, 2013. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3841The phonological neighbourhood effect on short-term memory for order A AbstractVerbal short-term memory and long-term memory were once thought to be distinct processes, with short-term memory responsible for the maintenance and manipulation of verbal information in the immediate consciousness, and long-term memory responsible for storage of words and associated information over the lifespan.However, more recent research has suggested that the processes are intrinsically linked. The ability to learn novel items suggests that short-term memory is able to contribute to long-term memory, and recent findings also indicate that long-term memory has an influence on short-term memory. Typically, long-term memory is thought to assist the recall of items from short-term memory through a late stage redintegration process but does not influence the serial ordering of items in memory.More recently, one long-term memory variable, phonological neighbourhood density has been shown to influence memory for order in an immediate serial recall task with lists containing both large and small phonological neighbourhood words. This result has implications for the locus of the link between long-term memory and short-term memory, and is indicative of a link occurring earlier than assumed by most models of short-term memory. The aim of this thesis was to replicate evidence that phonological neighbourhood density is a variable that is sensitive to order processing and to identify the conditions under which this sensitivity appears. In a series of experiments, the effect of phonological neighbourhood density on memory for order was examined using tasks that varied in their requirement to recall order information or item information. Memory for order was better for words from large neighbourhoods than from small neighbourhoods, for pure lists but not for mixed lists in a task that reduces the requirement to remember item information, namely serial reconstruction. Further experiments using this paradigm revealed that this result was not due to differences in word lengths between large and small stimuli sets nor due to differences in reaction time to the items at output, and could not be attributed to different processes underlying immediate serial recall and serial reconstruction. The difference in memory for order between large-and small-phonological neighbourhood lists was found to disappear under conditions of articulatory suppression, suggesting that sub-vocal articulation acts as an intermediary between long-term memory and short-term memory. Finally, a second long-term memory variable, word frequency, was examined and was also shown to influence memory for iii order. This is indicative of a general long-term memory effect on short-term memory for order that has not been identified previously in the literature. These results are disc...

show abstract

Frequency effects on memory: A resource-limited theory.

Popov¹,

Reder²

2020

Psychological Review

110

160

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a review of frequency effects in memory, accompanied by a theory of memory, according to which the storage of new information in long-term memory (LTM) depletes a limited pool of working memory (WM) resources as an inverse function of item strength. We support the theory by showing that items with stronger representations in LTM (e.g. high frequency items) are easier to store, bind to context, and bind to one another; that WM resources are involved in storage and retrieval from LTM; that WM performance is better for stronger, more familiar stimuli. We present a novel analysis of preceding item strength, in which we show from nine existing studies that memory for an item is higher if during study it was preceded by a stronger item (e.g. a high frequency word). This effect is cumulative (the more prior items are of high frequency, the better), continuous (memory proportional to word frequency of preceding item), interacts with current item strength (larger for weaker items) and interacts with lag (decreases as the lag between the current and prior study item increases). A computational model that implements the theory is presented, which accounts for these effects. We discuss related phenomena that the model/theory can explain. 9 Whether the resource is spread amongst all items or whether a fixed amount is allocated for a limited number of items is currently under debate in the literature. See the General Discussion for more on this topic.

show abstract

Serial recall, word frequency, and mixed lists: The influence of item arrangement.

Cited by 16 publications

References 49 publications

Conditional recall and the frequency effect in the serial recall task: an examination of item-to-item associativity

Conditional recall and the frequency effect in the serial recall task: an examination of item-to-item associativity

The phonological neighbourhood effect on short-term memory for order

Frequency effects on memory: A resource-limited theory.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About