Abstract
Irrelevant speech disrupts immediate recall of a short sequence of items. Salamé and Baddeley (1982) found a very small and nonsignificant increase in the irrelevant speech effect when the speech comprised items semantically identical to the to-be-remembered items, leading subsequent researchers to conclude that semantic similarity plays no role in the irrelevant speech effect. Experiment 1 showed that strong free associates of the to-be-remembered items disrupted serial recall to a greater extent than words that were dissimilar to the to-be-remembered items. Experiment 2 showed that this same pattern of disruption in a free recall task. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
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Neely, C.B., LeCompte, D.C. The importance of semantic similarity to the irrelevant speech effect. Mem Cogn 27, 37–44 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201211
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201211