The distinctiveness of the word-length effect.
The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure lists of short words, and lists of long or short words containing just a single isolated word of a different length. In both experiments for pure lists, there was a substantial recall advantage for short words; the isolated words were recalled better than other words in the same list, and there was a reverse word-length effect: Isolated long words were recalled better than isolated short words. These results contradict models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed or in terms of item-based effects (such as difficulty of assembling items).
Hulme
Charles
C
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, England. ch1@york.ac.uk
Neath
Ian
I
Stuart
George
G
Shostak
Lisa
L
Surprenant
Aimée M
AM
Brown
Gordon D A
GD
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D010700:Phonetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012691:Serial Learning; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary