Retroactive interference in short-term memory and the word-length effect

2011 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo Campoy
1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. V. M. Bishop ◽  
J. Robson

In normal adults, concurrent articulation impairs short-term memory, abolishing both the phonological similarity effect and the word length effect when visual presentation is used. It also interferes with ability to judge whether visually presented words rhyme. It is generally assumed that concurrent articulation impairs performance because it prevents people from recoding material into an articulatory form. If this is the explanation, then individuals who are congenitally speechless (anarthric) or speech-impaired (dysarthric) should show the same impairments as normal individuals who are concurrently articulating—i.e. they should have reduced memory spans, fail to show word length and phonological similarity effects in short-term memory, and find rhyme judgement difficult. These predictions were tested in a study of 48 cerebral palsied individuals: 12 anarthric, 12 dysarthric, and 24 controls individually matched to the speech-impaired subjects. There was no impairment of memory span in speech-impaired subjects, who showed normal phonological similarity and word-length effects in short-term memory. Speech-impaired subjects did not differ from their controls in ability to tell whether names of pairs of pictures rhymed. These results challenge the notion that “articulatory coding” is implicated in short-term memory and rhyme judgement and suggests that processes such as rehearsal and phonemic segmentation involve generation of a more abstract central phonological code.


1995 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Goerlich ◽  
I. Daum ◽  
I. Hertrich ◽  
H. Ackermann

The present study investigated the relationship between verbal short-term memory and motor speech processes in healthy control subjects and five patients suffering from Broca's aphasia. Control subjects showed a phonological similarity effect, a word length effect and an articulatory suppression effect, supporting the hypothesis of a phonological store and an articulatory loop component of short-term memory. A similar effect of phonological similarity was observed in the aphasic patients, while the effects of word length and articulatory suppression were reduced. In control subjects, measures of short-term memory were correlated to measures of motor speech rate only if speech rate was assessed in more complex conditions (such as sentence rather than syllable repetition). There was also evidence of an association of speech impairment and short-term memory deficits in the aphasic patients.


Nature ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 203 (4952) ◽  
pp. 1408-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. A. DALE

1994 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Cowan ◽  
Noelle L. Wood ◽  
Dawn N. Borne

Recent research questions the existence of a short-term storage mechanism capable of holding limited information temporarily Specifically, serial-recall results with a through-list distractor (TLD) procedure, in which a distracting task is interposed between list items as well as between the list and recall period, generally resemble the results of immediate-recall procedures The present study, however, reconfirms the utility of short-term storage by demonstrating an important difference between immediate and TLD recall A word-length effect, or advantage for lists of shorter words (which minimize short-term forgetting during spoken recall), did not occur with a TLD procedure


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