Peter Lovatt

Phonological Memory and Rule Learning.

The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com Copyright Wiley [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]

The Word-length Effect and Disyllabic Words

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.

Mood changes following social dance sessions in people with Parkinson's disease.

Dance interventions have physical benefits for the elderly, especially those with Parkinson’s disease. This study assessed the psychological benefits of dance. A total of 37 participants, with either Parkinson’s disease (n = 22) or age-matched controls (n = 15) completed mood questionnaires before and after a 10-week dance intervention. An overall reduction in total mood disturbance and a specific reduction in anger were observed. In addition, less fatigue was found for those initially scoring higher in depression. This suggests that dance can provide psychological benefits for both people with Parkinson’s disease and the elderly, with findings suggesting that this is an avenue to be explored further.

A Computational Account of Phonologically Mediated Free Recall

This paper investigates, by means of experimentation and simulation, Phonological Mediation in Immediate Free List Recall. It consists of two parts. The first part presents novel experimental evidence on Phonological Similarity and Word Length effects in free recall. The second part describes the architecture and simulation results of a novel connectionist model of free recall.