Exploring the relationship between new word learning and short-term memory for serial order recall, item recall, and item recognition

Abstract

We reexplored the relationship between new word learning and verbal short-term memory (STM) capacities, by distinguishing STM for serial order information, item recall, and item recognition. STM capacities for order information were estimated via a serial order reconstruction task. A rhyme probe recognition task assessed STM for item recognition. Item recall capacities were derived from the proportion of item errors in an immediate serial recall task. In Experiment 1, strong correlations were observed between item recall and item recognition, but not between the item STM tasks and the serial order task, supporting recent theoretical positions that consider that STM for item and serial order rely on distinct capacities. Experiment 2 showed that only the serial order reconstruction task predicted independent variance in a paired associate word–nonword learning task. Our results suggest that STM capacities for serial order play a specific and causal role in learning new phonological information.

We thank Mike Page, Geoff Ward, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions during the review process.

Notes

¹Since there was a total stimulus set of 12 letters divided in four subsets of 3 letters (two confusable sets: BPV and FSX; two nonconfusable sets: KMR and HLQ) and since four letters were presented on each trial, with two letters coming from the confusion sets (either from the same confusion set for acoustically similar sequences or one letter from each of the two confusion sets for acoustically dissimilar sequences) and two from the nonconfusable sets, Bjork and Healy (1974) estimated the chance probability of confusion errors at the item level at 2/12=.17, and the chance probability of order errors at 3/12=.25.

²Additional serial order probe recognition and semantic item probe recognition tasks had also been administered in the same experimental session. However, for the sake of parsimony, results from these tasks are not reported here. They can be obtained by contacting the first author of this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steve Majerus

Steve Majerus is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research (FNRS)