title: The effect of long-term working memory through personalization applied to free recall: uncurbing the primacy-effect enthusiasm.
abstract: In this study, a personalization method (Guida, Tardieu, & Nicolas, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21: 862-896 2009) was applied to a free-recall task. Fifteen pairs of words, composed of an object and a location, were presented to 93 participants, who had to mentally associate each pair and subsequently recall the objects. A 30-s delay was introduced on half of the trials, the presentation rate was manipulated (5 or 10 s per item), and verbal and visuospatial working memory tests were administered to test for their effects on the serial curve. Two groups were constituted: a personalized group, for whom the locations were well-known places on their university campus, and a nonpersonalized group, for whom the locations did not refer to known places. Since personalization putatively operationalizes long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, Psychological Review, 102: 211-245 1995)-namely, the capacity to store information reliably and rapidly in long-term memory-and if we take a dual-store approach to memory, the personalization advantage would be expected to be greater for pre-recency than for recency items. Overall, the results were compatible with long-term working memory theory. They contribute to validating the personalization method as a methodology to characterize the contribution of long-term memory storage to performance in working memory tasks.
authors.affiliation: Université Rennes 2, Rennes, France. alessandro.guida@univ-rennes2.fr
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guida
authors.forename: Doriane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gras
authors.forename: Yvonnick
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Noel
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Le Bohec
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Quaireau
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nicolas
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D057567:Memory, Long-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult