Abstract
Attributes of words, such as frequency and imageability, can influence memory for order. In serial recall, Hulme, Stuart, Brown, and Morin (Journal of Memory and Language, 49(4), 500–518, 2003) found that high-frequency words were recalled worse, and low-frequency words better, when embedded in alternating lists than pure lists. This is predicted by associative chaining, wherein each recalled list-item becomes a recall-cue for the next item. However, Hulme, Stuart, Brown, and Morin (Journal of Memory and Language, 49(4), 500–518, 2003) argued their findings supported positional-coding models, wherein items are linked to a representation of position, with no direct associations between items. They suggested their serial-position effects were due to pre-experimental semantic similarity between pairs of items, which depended on frequency, or a complex tradeoff between item- and order-coding (Morin, Poirier, Fortin, & Hulme, Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 13(4), 724–729, 2006). We replicated the smooth serial-position effects, but accounts based on pre-existing similarity or item–order tradeoffs were untenable. Alternative accounts based, on imageability, phonological and lexical neighbourhood sizes were also ruled out. The standard chaining account predicts that if accuracy is conditionalized on whether the prior item was correct, the word-frequency effect should reappear in alternating lists; however, this prediction was not borne out, challenging this retrieval-based chaining account. We describe a new account, whereby frequency influences the strengths of item–item associations, symmetrically, during study. A manipulation of word-imageability also produced a pattern consistent with item–item cueing at study, but left room for effects of imageability at the final stage of recall. These findings provide further support for the contribution of associative chaining to serial-recall behaviour and show that item-properties may influence serial-recall in multiple ways.
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Notes
Due to sound-driver problems.
We reran the main analyses with a more generous scoring criterion, adapted from a method used by Madan, Glaholt, and Caplan (2010), that used the UNIX spell-checker, aspell, to give credit when the correct item was found within the list of suggested “corrections” offered. This set of analyses did not alter the pattern of findings; all significant effects remained significant and all non-significant effects remained non-significant. Thus, spelling errors had a very minimal influence on the results, perhaps in part due to our matching of the word pools on word length, bigram frequency, and orthographic neighborhood.
Because lenient-scored data produced the same pattern of significant and non-significant effects, we report analyses only for strict scoring.
An initial ANOVA with design Rate[2,4 s] ×Property[Frequency, Imageability] ×List[Pure, Mixed] ×Item[High, Low] found no significant interactions with Rate (p>0.1), indicating that memory was qualitatively similar for both presentation rates. The main effect of Property was non-significant, suggesting that the word pools were well matched for overall difficulty. We therefore analyze word-frequency and imageability separately and present data collapsed across presentation rates.
At face-value, this account does not seem applicable to word-frequency and imageability manipulations. Furthermore, our high-frequency pairs and Hulme et al.’s (2003) had the greatest similarity, so a closed-loop rule may wrongly predict an inverted word-frequency effect for pure lists.
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Author Note
We thank Alec Solway and Michael Kahana for valuable feedback on the manuscript. Supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Caplan, J.B., Madan, C.R. & Bedwell, D.J. Item-properties may influence item–item associations in serial recall. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 483–491 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0701-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0701-7