The effects of recoding and presentation format on recency and suffix effects

Abstract

The primary linguistic theory of Shand and Klima (1981) hypothesizes that stimuli that cannot be directly processed without recoding are not in the primary linguistic mode of the subject and thus should lead to lesser recency and associated suffix effects. In three experiments, different normal hearing subjects learned to pair American Sign Language (ASL) stimuli, visual "quasivocables" (QVs), word-like letter strings, and auditory QVs with common English words. In the first experiment, the subjects were given sequences of ASL or QV stimuli and required to recall the associated words in strict serial order. In two other experiments involving auditory and visual presentation, respectively, subjects who had never been given paired associate training were required to recall the English words that had previously been associated with the ASL and QV stimuli, in a standard suffix paradigm. The results showed recency and suffix effects to be present only with auditorily presented QVs and words. Contrary to the predictions of the primary linguistic hypothesis, greater recency and larger suffix effects were present with the auditory QVs than with the auditory words, although the QVs were not primary linguistic and the task involved forced recoding. Previous results showing recency with ASL stimuli in normal subjects were not replicated. It is concluded that recency and suffix effects are not related either to the primary linguistic mode of the subject or to stimulus recoding, as we and Shand and Klima have defined them.

Semantic Satiation Effect in Young and Older Adults

“…Lastly, the finding that prolonged visual exposure added to auditory repetition did not change the semantic satiation effects observed with auditory repetition alone suggests that two converging sources of satiation do not produce additive effects. Of course, the encoding of visual stimuli involves the translation of visual patterns into orthographic codes before the latter can activate phonological codes (Manning, Koehler , & Hampton, 1990). Because auditory stimuli have a more direct route to phonological information, it is possible that they provided the phonological codes for the visually presented stimuli, and thus reduced the processing of the latter in our experiment.…”

Visual and auditory modality and suffix effects in young and elderly adults

“…One possible explanation is that the elderly show a relative deficit in recoding stimuli. A considerable body of research has suggested that visual stimuli are processed in such a way that they are recoded (see Manning, Koehler, & Hampton [1990] for a discussion of different types of recoding) into a representation which contains auditory components, while auditory stimuli produce representations more similar to the physical signal. Support for this view comes from classic work such as that of Conrad (1964), which shows that normal adults frequently make auditory confusion errors with visually-presented stimuli while the reverse confusions may be relatively rare (see, however, Manning, 1977).…”

Spatially distributed stimuli show little effect of recency with either visual or auditory presentation

“…Although the modality effect is extremely strong and consistent (see, e .g ., Frankish, 1989;Frick, 1988;Glenberg & Swanson, 1986 ;Manning et al , 1990;Nairne, 1988;Penney, 1989), no adequate explanation exists for it or for the similar effects with lip-read stimuli.…”

“…Past research has consistently shown that the recency effect is greater for auditorily as opposed to visually presented stimuli (e.g ., Frick , 1988;Glenberg & Swanson, 1986;Manning, Koehler , & Hampton, 1990 ;Nairne , 1988) , particularly in serial recall. In fact , auditory stimuli tend to produce Ushaped serial position curves in serial recall tasks , whereas visual stimuli either produce J-shaped curves, with a minimal recency effect, or no recency effect at all (Greene, 1987;Manning & Schreier, 1988;Penney, 1989).…”