Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory.

Roodenrys, Steven; Hulme, Charles; Lethbridge, Alistair; Hinton, Melinda; Nimmo, Lisa M.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.28.6.1019

Cited by 122 publications

(174 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

161

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Many item errors tended to be semantic and/or phonological substitutions-for example, oak for oat. This is consistent with previous findings regarding neighborhood errors in STM (Goh & Pisoni, 2003;Roodenrys, Hulme, Lethbridge, Hinton, & Nimmo, 2002). It is harder to make such substitutions for longer words, given that the number of matching competitors should be inversely proportional to word length.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect

Goh

2006

Psychon Bull Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Weexamined the influence of semantic similarity and proactive interference (PI) on the word length effect (WLE) in immediate serial recall. Wordlength was manipulated by comparing memory for monosyllabic versus multisyllabic words. PI effects were evaluated by manipulating semantic similarity in the tobe-remembered lists and examining its impact on the WLE's magnitude across eight-trial blocks. Words were sampled from a single semantic category across the entire block, from a single category within the list, or from different categories. Robust WLEswere observed in single-category blocks and when words were from different categories. However, when all the within-list words were from the same semantic category, the WLE was sharply attenuated. Except for the within-list semantic similarity condition, there was a buildup in PI levels in the form of protrusion errors across trials. However, the magnitude of the WLE did not increase with the PI buildup, suggesting that it was not affected by PI across trials.The word length effect (WLE) refers to better recall for short versus long words in short-term memory (STM; Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). The standard account for this phenomenon has been framed in terms of decay-based theories of immediate memory performance (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), in which the short-word advantage is attributed to the ability to rehearse short words more often than long words per unit time. Thus, rehearsal mechanisms are implicated in the trace maintenance processes employed to counter decay.This decay-based explanation has been challenged by research showing inconsistent effects of spoken duration on recall (Lovatt, Avons, & Masterson, 2000, 2002 Neath, Bireta, & Suprenant, 2003) and by demonstrations that phonological complexity (Caplan, Rochon, & Waters, 1992;Service, 1998) Neath and Nairne (1995) have proposed an alternative, interference-based account of the WLE. In this account, words are represented by a number of segments, with long words assumed to contain more segments than do short words. During recall, these segments need to be reconstructed from degraded traces in STM, which are This workwassupported by ResearchGrants C-I 07-000-222-091 and R-581-000-048-1 12to W.O.G. Wethank ElisabetService, Gerald Tehan, and an anonymous reviewer for constructive criticisms. The word lists are available from the authors. Address correspondence to W. O. Goh, Department,ofPsychology,National Universityof Singapore, Singapore 117570 (e-mail: psygohw@nus.edu.sg).then compared with an appropriate search set in long-term memory (LTM) for retrieval. There is a fixed probability of an assembly error for each segment. Because long words have more segments than do short words, the probability of reconstruction errors is greater for the former, which then reduces the efficacy of the trace as a retrieval cue by which to discriminate items in the memory search set. Hence, the probability ofsuccessfully recalling a long word is worse than that of recalling a short word. Nairne, Neath, and Serra (...

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect

Goh

2006

Psychon Bull Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, words are easier to recall than nonwords (Hulme, Maughan, & Brown, 1991), and high frequency words are easier to recall than low frequency ones (Roodenrys, Hulme, Lethbridge, Hinton, & Nimmo, 2002). Similarly, concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words (Walker & Hulme, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

Acheson

MacDonald

2009

Journal of Memory and Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many accounts of working memory posit specialized storage mechanisms for the maintenance of serial order. We explore an alternative, that maintenance is achieved through temporary activation in the language production architecture. Four experiments examined the extent to which the phonological similarity effect can be explained as a sublexical speech error. Phonologically similar nonword stimuli were ordered to create tongue twister or control materials used in four tasks: reading aloud, immediate spoken recall, immediate typed recall, and serial recognition. Dependent measures from working memory (recall accuracy) and language production (speech errors) fields were used. Even though lists were identical except for item order, robust effects of tongue twisters were observed. Speech error analyses showed that errors were better described as phoneme rather than item ordering errors. The distribution of speech errors was comparable across all experiments and exhibited syllable-position effects, suggesting an important role for production processes. Implications for working memory and language production are discussed.

show abstract

“…Because of redintegration processes, nonwords or unfamiliar words are significantly harder to recall than familiar lexical items (e.g., Hulme et al, 1991;Hulme et al, 1997). Similarly, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency words (Roodenrys, Hulme, Lethbridge, Hinton, & Nimmo, 2002), and nonwords that are more wordlike are recalled better than nonwords that are less wordlike (Gathercole, 1995).…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Phonological similarity neighborhoods and children’s short-term memory: Typical development and dyslexia

2005

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, we explore whether structural characteristics of the phonological lexicon affect serial recall in typically developing and dyslexic children. Recent work has emphasized the importance of long-term phonological representations in supporting short-term memory performance. This occurs via redintegration (reconstruction) processes, which show significant neighborhood density effects in adults. We assessed whether serial recall in children was affected by neighborhood density in word and nonword tasks. Furthermore, we compared dyslexic children with typically developing children of the same age or reading level. Dyslexic children are held to have impaired phonological representations of lexical items. These impaired representations may impair or prevent the use of long-term phonological representations to redintegrate short-term memory traces. We report significant rime neighborhood density effects for serial recall of both words and nonwords, for both dyslexic and typically developing children.

show abstract

Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory.

Cited by 122 publications

References 44 publications

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect

Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

Phonological similarity neighborhoods and children’s short-term memory: Typical development and dyslexia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About