The present study sought to clarify whether phonological similarity of encoded information impairs free recall performance (the phonological similarity effect: PSE) for nonwords. Five experiments examined the influence of the encoding process on the PSE in a step-by-step fashion, by using lists that consisted of phonologically similar (decoy)…

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…

Three experiments tested predictions of a neural network model of phonological short-term memory that assumes separate representations for order and item information, order being coded via a context-timing signal [Burgess, N., & Hitch, G. J. (1999). Memory for serial order: A network model of the phonological loop and its timing. "Psychological…

In a series of three experiments, native speakers of Japanese performed serial ordered written recall of visually presented Japanese kanji characters that varied systematically in visual and phonological similarity. Overall effects of phonological similarity were observed for retention of serial order under silent reading in Experiments 1 and 3…

Influential models of short-term memory have attributed the fact that short words are recalled better than longer words in serial recall (the length effect) to articulatory rehearsal. Crucial for this link is the finding that the length effect disappears under articulatory suppression. We show, instead, that, under suppression, the length effect…

The interaction between short- and long-term memory is studied within a model in which phonemic and (temporal) contextual information have separate influences on immediate verbal serial recall via connections with short- and long-term plasticity [Burgess, N., & Hitch, G.J. (1999). Memory for serial order: a network model of the phonological loop…

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…

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…

Semantic dementia patients make numerous phoneme migration errors in their immediate serial recall of poorly comprehended words. In this study, similar errors were induced in the word recall of healthy participants by presenting unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. This technique revealed that lexicality, word frequency, imageability,…

The observation of a syllable frequency effect in naming latencies has been an argument in favor of a functional role of stored syllables in speech production. Accordingly, various theoretical models postulate that a repository of syllable representations is accessed during phonetic encoding. However, the direct empirical evidence for locating the…

Recent experiments have shown that placing dissimilar items on lists of phonologically similar items enhances accuracy of ordered recall of the dissimilar items [Farrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2003). Dissimilar items benefit from phonological similarity in serial recall. "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," 29,…

Describes a study of whether dysarthric patients who have lost the ability to speak as a result of brain damage, but whose language is intact, show incidence of phonological coding and "inner speech." Concludes that phonological coding and subvocal rehearsal cab operate without feedback from the peripheral speech musculature. (SED)

The nonword phonotactic frequency effect in verbal short-term memory (STM) is characterized by superior recall for nonwords containing familiar as opposed to less familiar phoneme associations. This effect is supposed to reflect the intervention of phonological long-term memory (LTM) in STM. However the lexical or sublexical nature of this LTM…