The Influence of Long-term Memory Factors on Immediate Serial Recall: An Item and Order Analysis

1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 347-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Saint-Aubin ◽  
Marie Poirier
1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 384-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Poirier ◽  
Jean Saint-Aubin

A number of recent studies have explored the role of long-term memory factors in memory span tasks. The effects of lexicality, frequency, imageability, and word class have been investigated. The work reported in this paper examined the effect of semantic organization on the recall of short lists of words. Specifically, the influence of semantic category on immediate serial recall and the interaction of this variable with articulatory suppression was investigated in three experiments. Experiment 1 compared immediate serial recall performance when lists comprising items from the same semantic category were used (homogeneous condition) with a situation where lists held items from different semantic categories. Experiment 2 examined the same conditions with and without articulatory suppression during item presentation, and Experiment 3 reproduced these conditions with suppression occurring throughout presentation and recall. Results of all three experiments showed a clear advantage for the homogeneous condition. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the homogeneous category advantage did not depend on the articulatory loop. Furthermore, error analysis indicated that this effect was mainly attributable to better item information recall for the homogeneous condition. These results are interpreted as reflecting a long-term memory contribution to the recall stage of immediate serial recall tasks.


Memory ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 487-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy J. Tree ◽  
Chris Longmore ◽  
Steve Majerus ◽  
Nicky Evans

2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA M. NIMMO ◽  
STEVEN ROODENRYS

Recent evidence suggests that phonological short-term memory (STM) tasks are influenced by both lexical and sublexical factors inherent in the selection and construction of the stimuli to be recalled. This study examined whether long-term memory (LTM) influences STM at a sublexical level by investigating whether the frequency with which one-syllable nonwords occur in polysyllabic words influences recall accuracy on two phonological STM tasks, nonword repetition and serial recall. The results showed that recall accuracy increases when the stimuli to be recalled consist of one-syllable nonwords that occur often in polysyllabic English words. This result is consistent with the notion that LTM facilitates phonological STM at both a lexical and sublexical level. Implications for models of verbal STM are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kowialiewski ◽  
Sophie Portrat ◽  
Benoit Lemaire

It is now firmly established that long-term memory knowledge, such as semantic knowledge, supports the temporary maintenance of verbal information in Working Memory (WM). This support from semantic knowledge is well-explained by models assuming that verbal items are directly activated in long-term memory, and that this activation provides the representational basis for WM maintenance. However, the exact mechanisms underlying semantic influence on WM performance remain poorly understood. We manipulated the presence of between-item semantic relatedness in an immediate serial recall task, by mixing triplets composed of semantically related and unrelated items (e.g. leaf – tree – branch – wall – beer – dog; hand – father – truck – cloud – sky – rain). Compared to unrelated items, related items were better recalled, as had been classically observed. Critically, semantic relatedness also impacted WM maintenance in a complex manner, as observed by the presence of proactive benefit effects on subsequent unrelated items, and the absence of retroactive effects. The complexity of these interactions is well-captured by TBRS*-S, a decay-based computational architecture in which the activation occurring in long-term memory is described. The present study suggests that semantic knowledge can be used to free up WM resources that can be reallocated for maintenance purposes, and supports models postulating that long-term memory knowledge constrains WM maintenance processes.


2020 ◽  
pp. 116-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Oberauer

Working memory provides a medium for building and manipulating new representations that control our thoughts and actions. To fulfil this function, a working memory system needs to meet six requirements: (1) it must have a mechanism for rapidly forming temporary bindings to combine elements into new structures; (2) it needs a focus of attention for selectively accessing individual elements for processing; (3) it must hold both declarative representations of what is the case, and procedural representations of how to act on the current situation; (4) it needs a process for rapid updating, including rapid removal of outdated contents. Moreover, contents of working memory (5) need to be shielded from interference from long-term memory, while (6) working memory should be able to use information in long-term memory when it is useful. This chapter summarizes evidence in support of these mechanisms and processes. It presents three computational models that each implement some of these mechanisms, and explains different subsets of empirical findings about working memory: the SOB-CS model accounts for behaviour in tests of immediate serial recall, including complex-span tasks. The interference model explains data from a common test of visual working memory, the continuous-reproduction task. The set-selection model explains how people learn memory sets and task sets, how these sets are retrieved from long-term memory, and how these mechanisms enable switching between memory sets and task sets.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Darling ◽  
Richard J. Allen ◽  
Jelena Havelka

Visuospatial bootstrapping is the name given to a phenomenon whereby performance on visually presented verbal serial-recall tasks is better when stimuli are presented in a spatial array rather than a single location. However, the display used has to be a familiar one. This phenomenon implies communication between cognitive systems involved in storing short-term memory for verbal and visual information, alongside connections to and from knowledge held in long-term memory. Bootstrapping is a robust, replicable phenomenon that should be incorporated in theories of working memory and its interaction with long-term memory. This article provides an overview of bootstrapping, contextualizes it within research on links between long-term knowledge and short-term memory, and addresses how it can help inform current working memory theory.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eda Mizrak ◽  
Klaus Oberauer

When encoding task-relevant information in working memory (WM), we can use prior knowledge to facilitate task performance. For instance, when memorizing a phone number, we can benefit from recognizing some parts as known chunks (e.g., 911) and focus on memorizing the novel parts. Prior knowledge from long-term memory (LTM), however, can also proactively interfere with WM contents. Here, we show that WM selectively recruits information from LTM only when it is helpful, not when it would interfere. We used variants of the Hebb paradigm in which WM is tested through immediate serial recall of lists. Some lists were repeated frequently across trials, so they were acquired in LTM, as reflected in increasing serial-recall performance across repetitions. We compared interference conditions in which that LTM knowledge could interfere with holding another list in WM to a neutral condition in which that knowledge could be neither beneficial nor harmful. In Experiments 1-3, lists in the interference conditions shared their items with the learned lists but not their order. We observed no proactive interference. In Experiments 4 and 5, the interference lists’ first three items overlapped exactly with the learned lists, and only the remaining items had a new order This made LTM knowledge partially beneficial and partially harmful. Participants could use LTM flexibly to improve performance for the first part of the list without suffering interference on the second half. LTM-mediated learning of the first part even boosted memory for the unknown second part. We conclude that there is a flexible gate controlling the flow of information from LTM and WM so that LTM knowledge is recruited only when helpful.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Potter

AbstractRapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words or pictured scenes provides evidence for a large-capacity conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that momentarily provides rich associated material from long-term memory, permitting rapid chunking (Potter 1993; 2009; 2012). In perception of scenes as well as language comprehension, we make use of knowledge that briefly exceeds the supposed limits of working memory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-727
Author(s):  
Beula M. Magimairaj ◽  
Naveen K. Nagaraj ◽  
Alexander V. Sergeev ◽  
Natalie J. Benafield

Objectives School-age children with and without parent-reported listening difficulties (LiD) were compared on auditory processing, language, memory, and attention abilities. The objective was to extend what is known so far in the literature about children with LiD by using multiple measures and selective novel measures across the above areas. Design Twenty-six children who were reported by their parents as having LiD and 26 age-matched typically developing children completed clinical tests of auditory processing and multiple measures of language, attention, and memory. All children had normal-range pure-tone hearing thresholds bilaterally. Group differences were examined. Results In addition to significantly poorer speech-perception-in-noise scores, children with LiD had reduced speed and accuracy of word retrieval from long-term memory, poorer short-term memory, sentence recall, and inferencing ability. Statistically significant group differences were of moderate effect size; however, standard test scores of children with LiD were not clinically poor. No statistically significant group differences were observed in attention, working memory capacity, vocabulary, and nonverbal IQ. Conclusions Mild signal-to-noise ratio loss, as reflected by the group mean of children with LiD, supported the children's functional listening problems. In addition, children's relative weakness in select areas of language performance, short-term memory, and long-term memory lexical retrieval speed and accuracy added to previous research on evidence-based areas that need to be evaluated in children with LiD who almost always have heterogenous profiles. Importantly, the functional difficulties faced by children with LiD in relation to their test results indicated, to some extent, that commonly used assessments may not be adequately capturing the children's listening challenges. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12808607


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