The effect of labels on short-term memory for colors with nursery school children

Bernbach, Harley A.

doi:10.3758/bf03328509

Cited by 57 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Like her primacy effect, Lana's recency effect differed from that typical of adult humans in its extent. Adult humans generally show recency effects for the last seven or eight serial positions on lists of from 15 to 40 words (Murdock, 1962), whereas on lists of 8 items, adult humans show recency effects over the last four or five serial positions (e.g., Bernback, 1967;Phillips et al, 1967). Lana, on the other hand, showed a recency effect only at the last serial position.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Serial position and clustering effects in a chimpanzee’s “flee recall”

1981

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lana, a chimpanzee sophisticated in the language Yerkish, was tested for free recall on lists consisting of from one to eight words randomly drawn from one of three taxonomic categories or on lists consisting of nine words with every third word from a different category. Serial position effects were observed for the four-to eight-item lists, with statistically significant first-item primacy effects on the seven-and eight-word lists and last-position recency effects on the six·, seven-, and eight-word lists. Also, above-chance clustering was observed in the recall of the nine-item categorized lists. These results were compared and contrasted with the serial position and clustering effects obtained in free recall with humans. Several alternative theoretical accounts of the results were considered.This study was designed to examine the free recall capabilities of Lana, a chimpanzee sophisticated in the language Yerkish (Rumbaugh, 1977). Lana was tested to determine if her episodic free recall performance would demonstrate the well established serial position (Murdock, 1962) and category clustering (Bousfield, Cohen, & Whitmarsh, 1958) effects that are obtained with humans. Serial position effects refer to the finding that when adult humans are given a list of, say, 20 words presented sequentially, their recall will be better both for words occupying the first few positions in the list (primacy effect) and for words occupying the last few positions in the list (recency effect) than for words occupying the middle positions of the list (Murdock, 1962). Category clustering refers to the finding that when adult humans are given a sequentially presented list of words that can be grouped together into a number of different taxonomic categories, they will tend to organize or cluster their recall by the categories even when the presentation of the list was not sequenced by category (Bousfield et al., 1958).Serial position effects have previously been investigated with infrahuman subjects in studies employing serial probe recognition tasks (SPR) (Sands & Wright, This research was supported by NIH Grant HD.{)6016, awarded to Duane M. Rumbaugh, and NIH Grant RR.{)0165, awarded to the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University, to whom the authors wish to express their gratitude for their support to the study. Requests for reprints should be sent to James P. Buchanan, Department of Psychology, University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. 1980a, 1980b; R. Thompson & Herman, 1977). R. Thompson and Herman (1977) presented tone lists of one to six items to a bottle-nosed dolphin. After hearing the tone list, the dolphin had to classify a subsequent tone as either old (in the list) or new. The probability of recognizing the old sound was highest for the most recent sound presented and dropped off sigmoidally for successively earlier sounds. The dolphin's performance, then, indicated a significant recency effect without any corresponding primacy effect. On the other hand, Wright (1980a, 1980b) report bot...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Serial position and clustering effects in a chimpanzee’s “flee recall”

1981

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Bernbach (1967) instructed one group of S-year-olds to use simple names for four hard-to-label colors, which were presented in four-, six-, or eight-item displays. A reverse probe technique was used.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Age and task effects in short-term memory of children

Keely

1971

Perception & Psychophysics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Age and task effects in short-term memory of childrenChildren of 4, 8, and 14 years performed a visual memory task with easy-or hard-to-label displays and with or without repetition of stimuli over trials. Eight pictures were displayed in serial order, and the task was to find the card in the array that matched an identical probe card. Performance improvedwith age, and strong serial position effects were obtained for all ages and tasks. In contrast to previousstudies, primacy effects were obtained for the youngest children tested. Task difficulty increased with difficulty of labeling and with repetition, but order of task difficulty remained the same for all ages. The d' measure, borrowed from signal detection theory, revealed differencesin criterion levels over serial position, which in earlier studies had been confounded with strength of memory.

show abstract

“…Bernbach claimed that the labels provided the children with a means to rehearse the initial items in the list and consequently to improve their recall. Hagen and Kingsley (1968) and Hagen, Meacham and Mesibov (1970) called for a reinterpretation of the findings of Atkinson et (1964) and Bernbach (1967). In studies employing a much broader developmental range, five years through college, they found the effects of labels to be far more complex than that indicated by the earlier studies^ They found that labeling aided recall across the developir;:…”

Section: Related Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Brown and Lenneberg (1954) and Glanzer and Clark (1962) More recent studies of short term memory in children {Atkin son, Hansen and Bernbach, 1964;Bernbach, 1967;Flavell, Beach and Chinsky, 1966;and Hagen, Meacham and Mesibov, 1970) seem to be more concerned with understanding the role of the label in the memory process per se.…”

Section: Types Of Encoding Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The development of encoding processes in memory

Schumacher

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Signature was redacted for privacy.Signature was redacted for privacy.Signature was redacted for privacy.ii The beginning of this symbolic function is indicated by several different behaviors. These include verbal utter ances, symbolic play, deferred imitation and mental images.The fact that the symbolic function includes more than just 2 linguistic representation is sometimes considered a distinc tion between the theories of Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner.This distinction tends to be overemphasized in that the two men use the term "symbolic" in somewhat different manners.Bruner ( One aspect of Bruner's formulation plays a major role in the research conducted later in this paper. Bruner in dicates that at certain developmental levels one of the three representational systems is predominant and is the primary system employed. For example in very young children (under three years, approximately) objects are primarily represented by means of the actions which the child takes toward them.At a somewhat more advanced developmental level (three years to six years, approximately) the child primarily represents iconically, a representation which is isomorphic to that which is represented. Finally, as language develops as a 3 powerful abstracting tool, the child begins to employ the symbolic system more frequently. The manner in which these systems are employed is thus complex and interactive. One system is initiated, becomes predominant, and then becomes a part of a complex network while another system becomes predominant. By the time the child is fully developed the systems work in harmony to provide an efficient representa tional network.The third theoretical formulation to be considered has been developed by Robert Gagn^ (1968). He considers his theory as an alternative to those of Piaget and Bruner.This theory does not speak directly about representational processes, but about learning. He emphasizes that children must learn a number of subordinate capabilities before they can carry out any complex task. Thus representational processes in this formulation take on the form of certain learned capabilities such as discrimination and comparison. Encoding ProcessesOne approach frequently used in the study of represen tational thought employs the concept of encoding processes.These processes occur between the time a stimulus is attended to and recognized and before it is stored in long term memory (Tversky, 1968). Tversky (1968) indicates that three dis tinguishable processes are included in encoding: "The subject 4 may abstract information from the stimulus, committing only a part of it to memory; the subject may add information from long term memory to the stimulus, storing that in addition to or instead of the stimulus; the subject may group several stimuli together, forming, in effect, a new stimulus which may be operated upon just as the original stimulus is (p. 1)."She points out that all, some, or none of these processes may occur in encoding.Evidence for the existence of these three processes comes from several sou...

show abstract

The effect of labels on short-term memory for colors with nursery school children

Cited by 57 publications

References 2 publications

Serial position and clustering effects in a chimpanzee’s “flee recall”

Serial position and clustering effects in a chimpanzee’s “flee recall”

Age and task effects in short-term memory of children

The development of encoding processes in memory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About