Lexical and semantic binding in verbal short-term memory

E Jefferies, CR Frankish, MA Lambon Ralph

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

83 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Semantic dementia patients make numerous phoneme migration errors in their immediate serial recall of poorly comprehended words. In this study, similar errors were induced in the word recall of healthy participants by presenting unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. This technique revealed that lexicality, word frequency, imageability, and the ratio of words to nonwords all influence the stability of the phonological trace. These factors affected phoneme migrations and phoneme identity errors for both the words themselves and the nonwords they were presented with. Therefore, lexical/semantic knowledge encourages the phonological segments of familiar words to emerge together in immediate serial recall. In the absence of such knowledge, the elements of a particular item are more likely to recombine with the phonemes of other list items. These findings demonstrate the importance of lexical and semantic binding in verbal short-term memory.
Translated title of the contributionLexical and semantic binding in verbal short-term memory
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)81 - 98
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Memory and Language
Volume54 (1)
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2006

Bibliographical note

Publisher: Elsevier Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Lexical and semantic binding in verbal short-term memory'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this