Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory.
Immediate memory span and maximal articulation rate were assessed for word sets differing in frequency, word-neighborhood size, and average word-neighborhood frequency. Memory span was greater for high- than low-frequency words, greater for words from large than small phonological neighborhoods, and greater for words from high- than low-frequency phonological neighborhoods. Maximal articulation rate was also facilitated by word frequency, phonological-neighborhood size, and neighborhood frequency. In a final study all 3 lexical variables were found to influence the recall outcome for individual words. These effects of phonological-word neighborhood on memory performance suggest that phonological information in long-term memory plays an active role in recall in short-term-memory tasks, and they present a challenge to current theories of short-term memory.
Roodenrys
Steven
S
Department of Psychology, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. steven_roodenrys@uow.edu.au
Hulme
Charles
C
Lethbridge
Alistair
A
Hinton
Melinda
M
Nimmo
Lisa M
LM
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning