Home LiteratureArticle Details
PMID: 11700909 Published · ppublish English Clinical Trial Journal Article Randomized Controlled Trial

Maintenance of semantic information in capacity-limited item short-term memory.

Psychonomic bulletin & review ·Vol. 8 ·No. 3 ·2001-09-00 ·Pages 568-78

Haarmann H, Usher M

Abstract

We report a semantic effect in immediate free recall, which is localized at recency and is preserved under articulatory suppression but is highly reduced when recall is delayed after an intervening distractor task. These results are explained by a neurocomputational model based on a limited-capacity short-term memory (STM) store, consisting of activated long-term memory representations. The model makes additional predictions about serial position functions in semantically cued recall, indicating capacity limitations caused by a displacement type mechanism, which are confirmed in a second experiment. This suggests that in addition to the phonological component in verbal STM, there is an activation/item-limited component with semantically sensitive representations.

MeSH Terms
Adult Female Humans Male Memory, Short-Term Mental Recall Models, Psychological Phonetics Semantics Verbal Learning
Authors & Affiliations
2 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Haarmann H
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park 20742, USA. [email protected]
Usher M
References (32)
32 references, click to expand
  1. The selective impairment of auditory verbal short-term memory.
    Brain. 1969;92(4):885-96 PMID: 5364015
  2. Short-term retention of individual verbal items.
    J Exp Psychol. 1959 Sep;58:193-8 PMID: 14432252
  3. Simultaneous acoustic and semantic coding in short-term memory.
    Nature. 1970 Jul 18;227(5255):288-9 PMID: 5428200
  4. Prior recall of newly learned items and the recency effect in free recall.
    Can J Psychol. 1968 Jun;22(3):157-63 PMID: 5658925
  5. A capacity theory of comprehension: individual differences in working memory.
    Psychol Rev. 1992 Jan;99(1):122-49 PMID: 1546114
  6. The magical number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity.
    Behav Brain Sci. 2001 Feb;24(1):87-114; discussion 114-85 PMID: 11515286
  7. Set-size effects in primary memory: an age-related capacity limitation?
    Mem Cognit. 1988 Sep;16(5):480-7 PMID: 3173097
  8. Creating proactive interference in immediate recall: building a dog from a dart, a mop, and a fig.
    Mem Cognit. 1998 May;26(3):477-89 PMID: 9610119
  9. A multinomial processing tree model for degradation and redintegration in immediate recall.
    Mem Cognit. 1993 Mar;21(2):168-75 PMID: 8469125
  10. Mapping of semantic, phonological, and orthographic verbal working memory in normal adults with functional magnetic resonance imaging.
    Neuropsychology. 1999 Apr;13(2):171-87 PMID: 10353369
  11. Recovery in deep dysphasia: evidence for a relation between auditory - verbal STM capacity and lexical errors in repetition.
    Brain Lang. 1996 Jan;52(1):83-113 PMID: 8741977
  12. The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory?
    Trends Cogn Sci. 2000 Nov 1;4(11):417-423 PMID: 11058819
  13. Aphasic sentence comprehension as a resource deficit: a computational approach.
    Brain Lang. 1997 Aug;59(1):76-120 PMID: 9262852
  14. Serial order effects in short-term memory.
    J Exp Psychol. 1968 Apr;76(4):Suppl:1-15 PMID: 5654204
  15. Short-term memory: where do we stand?
    Mem Cognit. 1993 Mar;21(2):142-5 PMID: 8469121
  16. The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information.
    Psychol Rev. 1956 Mar;63(2):81-97 PMID: 13310704
  17. A computational approach to prefrontal cortex, cognitive control and schizophrenia: recent developments and current challenges.
    Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1996 Oct 29;351(1346):1515-27 PMID: 8941963
  18. Contextual variability and serial position effects in free recall.
    J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 1999 Jul;25(4):923-41 PMID: 10439501
  19. A feature model of immediate memory.
    Mem Cognit. 1990 May;18(3):251-69 PMID: 2192233
  20. Semantic similarity and immediate serial recall: is there a detrimental effect on order information?
    Q J Exp Psychol A. 1999 May;52(2):367-94 PMID: 10428684
  21. Working memory: activation limitations on retrieval.
    Cogn Psychol. 1996 Jun;30(3):221-56 PMID: 8660785
  22. Neural mechanisms of visual working memory in prefrontal cortex of the macaque.
    J Neurosci. 1996 Aug 15;16(16):5154-67 PMID: 8756444
  23. A deficit in the short-term retention of lexical-semantic information: forgetting words but remembering a story.
    J Exp Psychol Gen. 1999 Mar;128(1):56-77 PMID: 10100391
  24. The effects of word co-occurrence on short-term memory: associative links in long-term memory affect short-term memory performance.
    J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2000 May;26(3):796-802 PMID: 10855432
  25. Word-frequency effects on short-term memory tasks: evidence for a redintegration process in immediate serial recall.
    J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 1997 Sep;23(5):1217-32 PMID: 9293631
  26. Short-term memory for word sequences as a function of acoustic, semantic and formal similarity.
    Q J Exp Psychol. 1966 Nov;18(4):362-5 PMID: 5956080
  27. Neural networks with dynamic synapses.
    Neural Comput. 1998 May 15;10(4):821-35 PMID: 9573407
  28. Very short-term conceptual memory.
    Mem Cognit. 1993 Mar;21(2):156-61 PMID: 8469123
  29. Context, cortex, and dopamine: a connectionist approach to behavior and biology in schizophrenia.
    Psychol Rev. 1992 Jan;99(1):45-77 PMID: 1546118
  30. Memory for related and unrelated words: further evidence on the influence of semantic factors in immediate serial recall.
    Q J Exp Psychol A. 1995 May;48(2):384-404 PMID: 7610273
  31. Prefrontal neuronal activity in rhesus monkeys performing a delayed anti-saccade task.
    Nature. 1993 Oct 21;365(6448):753-6 PMID: 8413653
  32. PRIMARY MEMORY.
    Psychol Rev. 1965 Mar;72:89-104 PMID: 14282677
Article Info
Journal
Psychonomic bulletin & review
Abbr.
Psychon Bull Rev
ISSN
1069-9384
DOI
10.3758/bf03196193
Email
[email protected]
Published
2001-09-00
Pages
568-78
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
9502924
Subset
IM
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.3758/bf03196193 View journal details
Analysis Services
Analysis Services

Contact

No. 2 Wenbo Road, Zhangqiu District, Jinan, Shandong

Qilu Normal University · Genelibs Bioinformatics Lab

750 Shunhua Rd, Jinan

2F, Bldg F, University Science Park

Tel: 0531-88819269

WeChat Official Account

Follow our WeChat subscription account for real-time updates and the latest in medical and biological research.


Business Email

E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright © 2026.Genelibs Jinan Honghui Biotechnology Co., Ltd. 鲁ICP备20007159号-2