Phonological Similarity Effects Without a Phonological Store: An Individual Differences Model (original) (raw)
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The phonological similarity effect in immediate recall: Positions of shared phonemes
Memory & Cognition, 2000
Earlier literature proposes two ways phonological similarity could harm immediate recall: (1) It could increase the degradation of the representations of items in memory, or (2) it could decrease the probability that a degraded representation is correctly reconstructed. A multinomial processing tree model for each hypothesis was used to analyze an immediate recall experiment. Both gave a good account of the data, but, of the two, results favor the hypothesis that the effect of phonological similarity is to impair reconstruction of degraded representations. A second issue is whether positions of repeated phonemes in phonologically similar items matter. We found that mere repetition of phonemes produced a phonological similarity effect. Repeated phonemes in the same positions appeared to produce a greater effect. A fmal findingis that when reading rate was preequated, phonological similarity affected memory span by changing the time taken to recall a list of span length.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2011
Despite developments in phonology over the last few decades, models of verbal working memory make reference to phoneme-sized phonological units, rather than to the features of which they are composed. This study investigates the influence on short-term retention of such features by comparing the serial recall of lists of syllables with varying types and levels of similarity in their onset consonants. Lists are (a) dissimilar (/fa-na-ga/) (b) acoustically similar (/pa-ta-ka/) or (c) articulatorily similar (/da-la-za/). When no overt articulation is required, we find no decrease in performance for articulatorily similar items as compared to the dissimilar list. However, we are able to show that acoustic similarity clearly impairs recall. It is only when participants recall the lists orally, that performance is impaired for both types of similar lists. These results have implications for accounts of the phonological similarity effect in particular and of verbal working memory in general.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2007
In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that those errors in immediate serial recall (ISR) that are attributable to phonological confusability share a locus with segmental errors in normal speech production. In the first two experiments, speech errors were elicited in the repeated paced reading of six-letter lists. The errors mirrored the phonological confusions seen in ISR. In a third experiment, participants performed ISR for four-word lists. Some of the lists were designed to encourage the exchange of onset consonants between adjacent words. ISR was shown to be sensitive to this manipulation, further supporting the common-locus hypothesis. The results are discussed in the context of theories of serial recall and of speech production, and are further related to neuropsychological data.
Phonological similarity in serial recall: Constraints on theories of memory
Journal of Memory and Language, 2008
In short-term serial recall, similar-sounding items are remembered more poorly than items that do not sound alike. When lists mix similar and dissimilar items, performance on the dissimilar items is of considerable theoretical interest. Farrell and Lewandowsky . Dissimilar items benefit from phonological similarity in serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29,[838][839][840][841][842][843][844][845][846][847][848][849] recently showed that if guessing strategies are controlled, dissimilar items on mixed lists are recalled more accurately than on pure dissimilar lists, a finding that challenges several current theories of serial recall. This article presents two experiments that extend the generality of the mixed-list advantage for dissimilar items and then applies three theories of memory-the primacy model, SIMPLE, and SOB-to the data. The simulations show that the data are best explained by the SOB theory . Mixed-list phonological similarity effects in delayed serial recall.
According to the phonological−loop model of short−term verbal working memory, serial−recall accuracy and memory span should increase directly with the phonological dissimilarity of the items being recalled. However, little is known about the conditions under which this prediction may hold. To characterize these conditions better, we have developed PSIMETRICA, a formal quantitative technique for measuring phonological dissimilarity (Mueller & Meyer, SMP 2000). Analyses based on PSIMETRICA suggest that even introspectively undetectable differences in phonological dissimilarity can affect recall accuracy significantly. Consequently, many past memory experiments may have been contaminated by unacknowledged differences in phonological dissimilarity. For example, conducted three serial recall experiments involving six sets of words. They found no consistent relationship between articulatory duration and recall accuracy across their word sets, which led them to reject the phonological−loop model. However, our analyses show that Lovatt et al.'s conclusions are unwarranted because their sets of words embodied subtle but potent differences in phonological dissimilarity. Furthermore, using Lovatt et al.'s word sets, we have conducted experiments whose results support the phonological−loop model. Our phonological−dissimilarity measurements based on PSIMETRICA have enabled us to predict the outcomes of these new experiments on an a priori basis. Given these outcomes, we consider several detailed hypotheses about how articulatory rehearsal and phonological dissimilarity interact in the context of short−term verbal serial recall.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2006
Three experiments examined whether the survival of the phonological similarity effect (PSE) under articulatory suppression for auditory but not visual to-be-serially recalled lists is a perceptual effect rather than an effect arising from the action of a bespoke phonological store. Using a list of 5 auditory items, a list length at which the expression of phonological storage should, ostensibly, be strong, the PSE under suppression was removed at recency by a suffix (Experiment 1) and removed throughout by a suffix combined with a prefix (Experiment 2). Finally, the PSE under suppression could be restored simply by decreasing the acoustic similarity between the prefix-and-suffix and the tobe-remembered list (Experiment 3). The results favour a perceptual-gestural view over a dedicated-system view of short-term Ômemory.Õ
Relating distinctive orthographic and phonological processes to episodic memory performance
Memory & Cognition, 2004
The concept of distinctiveness suggests that memory for a given item will benefit to the extent to which that item is unique. For example, the von Restorff effect (see, e.g., refers to better memory performance for items that are made "different" from others during encoding (e.g., by underlining them, presenting them in a different color, etc.). In addition, demonstrated that items with distinctive word forms (e.g., phlegm) were recalled at a higher rate than were items not orthographically distinctive (e.g., primate). More recently, reported that words with inconsistent orthographic-to-phonological mappings (e.g., plaid ) were recalled at a higher rate than were words with more consistent orthographic-to-phonological mappings (e.g., plump). In these studies, the unique attributes differentiated particular items from others during encoding, and they may have been reactivated during retrieval to facilitate memory for them.
Articulatory rehearsal and phonological storage in working memory
1993
The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a lO-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal. Recent theoretical developments in the field of working memory have depended on the identification and investigation of converging operations that rule out competing hypotheses about different hypothetical components (Baddeley, 1986, p. 114; Hitch, 1980; cf. Gamer, Hake, & Eriksen, 1956). In immediate serial recall, performance is reliably affected by a number of properties of the stimulus items or of the procedure under which they are learned: (1) the degree of phonemic confusability among the items to be remembered (the phonemic similarity effect); (2) the articulatory duration of the items to be remembered (the word length effect); (3) the modality of presentation of the items to be remembered; (4) requiring the subjects to engage in the concurrent vocalization of irrelevant speech sounds (the effect of articulatory suppression); and (5) the concurrent presentation of irrelevant speech sounds that are to be ignored (the effect of unattended speech). The specific pattern of interrelation-The authors' collaboration was made possible by travel grants under an agreement between the Royal Society and the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerche. They are grateful to Jill Bayfield, Morag Maclean, and Johanne Reed for their assistance in running Experiment 4, to Marion Gallasch and Anna van Leempunen for their assistance in running Experiment 5, and to
Deficits in Phonological Memory
During the past decade research is witnessing profound advancements toward understanding phonological processing in children, specifically in the auditory processing which is highly related to the mastery of written language. This deficit in phonological processing implicates the most common cause toward disabilities in reading for children. Rapid naming, phonological awareness, and phonological memory represent three correlated but distinct types of abilities in