Jefferies Elizabeth, Frankish Clive, Noble Katie
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Feb;64(2):241-60. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2010.495159. Epub 2010 Aug 2.
This study examined the effects of item length on the contribution of linguistic knowledge to immediate serial recall (ISR). Long words are typically recalled more poorly than short words, reflecting the greater demands that they place on phonological encoding, rehearsal, and production. However, reverse word length effects--that is, better recall of long than short words--can also occur in situations in which phonological maintenance is difficult, suggesting that long words derive greater support from long-term lexical knowledge. In this study, long and short words and nonwords (containing one vs. three syllables) were presented for immediate serial recall in (a) pure lists and (b) unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. The mixed-list paradigm is known to disrupt the phonological stability of words, encouraging their phonemes to recombine with the elements of other list items. In this situation, standard length effects were seen for nonwords, while length effects for words were absent or reversed. A detailed error analysis revealed that long words were more robust to the mixed-list manipulation than short words: Their phonemes were less likely to be omitted and to recombine with phonemes from other list items. These findings support an interactive view of short-term memory, in which long words derive greater benefits from lexical knowledge than short words-especially when their phonological integrity is challenged by the inclusion of nonwords in mixed lists.
本研究考察了项目长度对语言知识在即时系列回忆（ISR）中所起作用的影响。长单词的回忆效果通常比短单词差，这反映出长单词在语音编码、复述和产出方面需要更多的投入。然而，在语音维持困难的情况下，也会出现相反的单词长度效应，即长单词比短单词回忆得更好，这表明长单词从长期词汇知识中获得了更多的支持。在本研究中，呈现长单词和短单词以及非单词（单音节与三音节）用于即时系列回忆，实验条件包括：（a）纯词表，以及（b）单词和非单词不可预测的混合词表。已知混合词表范式会破坏单词的语音稳定性，促使其音素与其他词表项目的元素重新组合。在这种情况下，非单词呈现出标准的长度效应，而单词的长度效应不存在或相反。详细的错误分析表明，长单词比短单词对混合词表操作更具抗性：它们的音素更不容易被遗漏，也更不容易与其他词表项目的音素重新组合。这些发现支持了一种关于短期记忆的交互观点，即长单词比短单词从词汇知识中获得的益处更大——特别是当混合词表中包含非单词而对其语音完整性构成挑战时。
