The phonological store abandoned

Abstract

Baddeley and Larsen (2007) argue that a number of key findings reported by Jones, Macken, and Nicholls (2004) and Jones, Hughes, and Macken (2006) pointing to shortcomings of the phonological store construct arise from the store being abandoned with long lists. In our rejoinder we point out that Baddeley and Larsen use a procedure in which retrieval from the supposed phonological storage would not—according to their own theory—have been possible, and we present theoretical, empirical, and logical problems with their “store abandonment” argument and highlight a number of difficulties associated with the interpretation of suffix and prefix effects. We conclude that our data are still problematic for the phonological store construct and suggest that a reformulation of short-term memory theory needs to embody (or indeed focus exclusively upon) perceptual and effector systems rather than bespoke storage modules.

Dylan Jones is also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Western Australia. This work was supported by a grant awarded to the authors by the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council (RES–062–23–0011). Thanks are due to John Marsh for a critical reading of an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

¹ It may be worth noting that B&L seem to have misinterpreted the results of Jones et al. (2006) when they state that “it is only in this latter study [Experiment 3 of Jones et al., 2006] that the crucial interaction is totally confined to the recency portion of the serial position curve” (B&L, p. 499). In fact, in Experiment 3 of Jones et al. (2006), the similarity effect is apparent throughout the list but is also obliterated throughout the list with the addition of a prefix and suffix.