The semantic relatedness effect in serial recall: Deconfounding encoding and recall order

Kowialiewski, Benjamin; Krasnoff, Julia; Mızrak, Eda; Oberauer, Klaus

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2022.104377

“…Item memory was better in the grouped than in the interleaved condition, despite these lists being identical in terms of semantic content, differing only in their order of presentation. This separation effect replicates previous observations (Kowialiewski, Gorin, et al, 2021;Saint-Aubin et al, 2014;Kowialiewski, Krasnoff, Mizrak & Oberauer, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…There were two main findings from this study. First, semantic similarity enhanced order memory, but only when the similar items were presented in a grouped manner, thus replicating previous observations (Kowialiewski et al, 2022). Second, semantic similarity reliably constrained the pattern of order errors, regardless of the lists' semantic structure, confirming the earlier results by Poirier et al (2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Does semantic similarity affect immediate memory for order? Usually not, but sometimes it does

Kowialiewski¹,

Majerus²,

Oberauer³

2023

Preprint

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Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between WM representations. In contrast, when lists of items that are all semantically similar are compared to lists of dissimilar items, semantic similarity does not negatively impact order memory, questioning the idea that semantic information is part of the WM content. This study reports four experiments in which semantic similarity was manipulated using lists composed of multiple semantic categories. These experiments revealed two main patterns. First, semantic similarity can increase, rather than decrease, order memory. Second, semantic knowledge reliably constrains the way items migrate; when migrating, items tend to do so more often toward the position of other similar items, rather than migrating toward other dissimilar items. These results challenge the way current models of WM represent similarity. The plausibility of different theoretical accounts and mechanisms is discussed.

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“…There were two main findings from this study. First, semantic similarity enhanced order memory, but only when the similar items were presented in a grouped manner, thus replicating previous observations (Kowialiewski et al, 2022). Second, semantic similarity reliably constrained the pattern of order errors, regardless of the lists’ semantic structure, confirming the earlier results by Poirier et al (2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Item memory was better in the grouped than in the interleaved condition, despite these lists being identical in terms of semantic content, differing only in their order of presentation. This separation effect replicates previous observations (Kowialiewski, Gorin, & Majerus, 2021; Kowialiewski et al, 2022; Saint-Aubin et al, 2014).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In addition to the above observations, a recent study showed that semantic similarity can increase the ability to recall items in their correct order. Kowialiewski et al (2022) reported a series of experiments in which lists were presented in subgroups of two semantically similar items (e.g., car , taxi , shirt , vest , orange , lemon ). As compared to a dissimilar condition, they observed that semantically similar subgroups not only enhanced item memory, but also order memory.…”

Section: Similarity and Order Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Does semantic similarity affect immediate memory for order? Usually not, but sometimes it does.

Kowialiewski,

Majerus,

Oberauer

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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1

0

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Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between WM representations. In contrast, when lists of items that are all semantically similar are compared to lists of dissimilar items, semantic similarity does not negatively impact order memory, questioning the idea that semantic information is part of the WM content. This study reports four experiments in which semantic similarity was manipulated using lists composed of multiple semantic categories. These experiments revealed two main patterns. First, semantic similarity can increase, rather than decrease, order memory. Second, semantic knowledge reliably constrains the way items migrate; when migrating, items tend to do so more often toward the position of other similar items, rather than migrating toward other dissimilar items. These results challenge the way current models of WM represent similarity. The plausibility of different theoretical accounts and mechanisms is discussed.

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Similarity-Based Compression in Working Memory: Implications for Decay and Refreshing Models

Kowialiewski

¹

,

Lemaire

²

,

Portrat

³

2023

Comput Brain Behav

1

0

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The ability to compress information is a fundamental cognitive function. It allows working memory (WM) to overcome its severely limited capacity. Recent evidence suggests that the similarity between items can be used to compress information, leading to a rich pattern of behavioral results. This work presents a series of simulations showing that this rich pattern of WM performance is captured using the principles of TBRS*, a decay and refreshing architecture. By assuming that similar items are compressed, the architecture can explain the beneficial effect of similarity on the items themselves. The architecture also explains the fact that when similar items are mixed with dissimilar items, this provides a proactive—but no retroactive—benefit on WM performance. In addition, the model captures fine-grained patterns of transposition errors recently reported. Several analyses are reported showing the robustness of the model’s predictions. We reached the conclusion that decay and refreshing theories provide a plausible explanation for compression effects in WM. These conclusions are discussed in light of recent experimental results. The importance of computational modeling for testing theories is emphasized.

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The semantic relatedness effect in serial recall: Deconfounding encoding and recall order

Cited by 16 publications

References 57 publications

Does semantic similarity affect immediate memory for order? Usually not, but sometimes it does

Does semantic similarity affect immediate memory for order? Usually not, but sometimes it does

Does semantic similarity affect immediate memory for order? Usually not, but sometimes it does.

Similarity-Based Compression in Working Memory: Implications for Decay and Refreshing Models

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