Cortis Cathleen, Dent Kevin, Kennett Steffan, Ward Geoff
Department of Psychology, University of Essex.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2015 Jul;41(4):1179-214. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000086. Epub 2014 Dec 22.
When participants are presented with a short list of unrelated words and they are instructed that they may recall in any order, they nevertheless show a very strong tendency to recall in forward serial order. Thus, if asked to recall in any order: "hat, mouse, tea, stairs," participants often respond "hat, mouse, tea, stairs" even though there was no forward order requirement of the task. In 4 experiments, we examined whether this tendency is language-specific, reflecting mechanisms involved with speech perception, speech production, and/or verbal short-term memory. Specifically, we examined whether we would observe similar findings when participants were asked to recall, in any order, lists of between 1 and 15 nonverbal stimuli, such as visuospatial locations (Experiment 1, Experiment 3, Experiment 4), or touched facial locations (Experiment 2). Contrary to a language-specific explanation, we found corresponding tendencies (albeit somewhat reduced) in the immediate free recall of these nonverbal stimuli. We conclude that the tendency to initiate recall of a short sequence of items with the first item is a general property of memory, which may be augmented by verbal coding.
当向参与者呈现一列由不相关单词组成的简短列表，并告知他们可以按任何顺序回忆时，他们仍然表现出非常强烈的按正向顺序回忆的倾向。因此，如果要求参与者按任何顺序回忆：“帽子、老鼠、茶、楼梯”，即使任务没有正向顺序要求，参与者也经常会回答“帽子、老鼠、茶、楼梯”。在4项实验中，我们研究了这种倾向是否具有语言特异性，是否反映了与言语感知、言语产生和/或言语短期记忆相关的机制。具体而言，我们研究了当要求参与者按任何顺序回忆1至15个非言语刺激列表时，是否会观察到类似的结果，这些非言语刺激包括视觉空间位置（实验1、实验3、实验4）或触摸的面部位置（实验2）。与语言特异性解释相反，我们发现在这些非言语刺激的即时自由回忆中也存在相应的倾向（尽管有所减弱）。我们得出结论，以第一个项目开始回忆短序列项目的倾向是记忆的一个普遍特性，言语编码可能会增强这种倾向。
