Word-frequency effects on short-term memory tasks: evidence for a redintegration process in immediate serial recall.
Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-frequency words in short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrated effects of word frequency on memory span that were independent of differences in speech rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that word frequency has an increasing effect on serial recall across serial positions, but Experiment 4 showed that this effect was abolished for backward recall. A model that includes a redintegration process that operates to "clean up" decayed short-term memory traces is proposed, and the multinomial processing tree model described by R. Schweickert (1993) is used to provide a quantitative fit to data from Experiments 2, 3, and 4.
Hulme
C
C
Department of Psychology, University of York, United Kingdom. CHI@york.ac.uk
Roodenrys
S
S
Schweickert
R
R
Brown
G D
GD
Martin
M
M
Stuart
G
G
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010700:Phonetics; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D012691:Serial Learning; D014705:Verbal Behavior