Allen, RJ orcid.org/0000-0002-1887-3016, Hitch, GJ and Baddeley, AD (2018) Exploring the sentence advantage in working memory: Insights from serial recall and recognition. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71 (12). pp. 2571-2585. ISSN 1747-0218
Abstract
Immediate serial recall of sentences has been shown to be superior to that of unrelated words. This study was designed to further explore how this effect might emerge in recall and to establish whether it also extends to serial recognition, a different form of response task that has relatively reduced output requirements. Using auditory or visual presentation
of sequences, we found a substantial advantage for sentences over lists in serial recall, an effect shown on measures of recall accuracy, order, intrusion, and omission errors and reflected in transposition gradients. In contrast however, recognition memory based on a standard change detection paradigm gave only weak and inconsistent evidence for a sentence superiority effect. However, when a more sensitive staircase procedure imported from psychophysics was used, a clear sentence advantage was found although the effect sizes were smaller than those observed in serial recall. These findings suggest that sentence recall benefits from automatic processes that utilise long-term knowledge across encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2017, Experimental Psychology Society. This is an author produced version of a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | working memory; sentence memory; recall; recognition; staircase method |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 02 Feb 2018 17:34 |
Last Modified: | 14 Dec 2018 12:08 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1747021817746929 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:126949 |