Ronald L. Cohen

Memory for action events: The power of enactment

Memory researchers have traditionally made use of verbal materials in their empirical studies. During the last decade or so, there has been a burgeoning interest in memory for other classes of materials — in particular, memory for action events. This report reviews briefly some of the research in this area. The emphasis is on the recall of series of instructions, such aslift the pen, put on the ring. The core finding in those studies is that enactment of the instructions during the study phase, either by the subject or by the experimenter, improves performance on a subsequent recall test. Some explanations for the mnemonic effect of enactment are examined, as also are subsidiary issues, such as population and individual differences in the recall of action events. Implications for education are discussed, including the possibility of a two-way interaction between enactment and cognition.

The susceptibility of child witnesses to suggestion

This article deals with the reliability of child witnesses, in particular from the viewpoint that child witnesses should be treated with suspicion because their memories are very susceptible to suggestion. An experiment is reported, in which grade 3, grade 6, and college students were compared on their ability to recall events from a film, in the face of (mis)leading questions from an interrogator. The data showed that the grade 6 students were equal to the college students in memory capacity and in their ability to resist suggestion. The grade 3 students were inferior to the older subjects in these areas. However, the results from a second testing session led to the conclusion that although the younger children appeared to submit to suggestion much more readily than the older subjects, the effect of suggestion on actual memory was not significantly different for the three subject-groups. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the present status of child witnesses in Anglo-Saxon law systems.

Relation between intelligence and short-term memory

Abstract Several prior studies have concluded that the correlation between IQ and STM depends on differences in encoding or rehearsal strategies. Low IQ subjects use less effective strategies than high IQ subjects. One basis for these conclusions is that IQ exerts its greatest influence on the recall of early items in to-be-remembered lists, having little effect on the recall of recency items. The present study measured IQ STM correlations in children, using probed serial recall of supraspan digit lists. The results showed the predictive power of IQ to range from a maximum in the case of recall for recency items to practically zero in the case of primacy items. Several explanations for the data are discussed, taking account of the possible roles of individual differences in rehearsal, in item persistence, and in the ability to access specified information in a short-term store.

Individual Differences in Short-Term Memory

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of the research on individual differences in short-term memory (STM) capacity as related to general intellectual capacity (IQ) and reading ability. It highlights the individual differences in STM as related to IQ and reading ability and discusses the processes underlying these differences. There are enough studies that use both types of tasks, STM and serial STM (SSTM) with the same subjects to suggest that the confounding of task and subject type are not a serious threat to the preceding argument. Individual differences in STM tasks other than SSTM may well be dependent on corresponding differences in strategy efficiency, whether these individual differences are related to reading skill, age, or IQ. IQ and reading ability, which affect primacy performance in nonserial tasks, do not appear to affect performance on primacy items in SSTM tasks but by the results of the memory training study. Whereas some progress has been made toward identifying critical processes in nonserial STM, the critical processes in SSTM are still obscure.

The development of serial short-term memory and the articulatory loop hypothesis

Abstract The working memory model attributes the development of span in children to increasing proficiency in the use of an articulatory loop (AL). This hypothesis was investigated by testing samples of two different age levels with a fixed span task, and with a running memory task that required the recall of the 5 terminal items in each list. Some of the results supported the AL hypothesis: Fixed span and articulation rate correlated within each of the samples; the effect of age on fixed span disappeared when articulation proficiency served as a covariate in an analysis of covariance. Several findings challenged the validity of the hypothesis, however. For example, the reliable correlation coefficients found between fixed span and running memory were not generally reduced when the influence of articulation speed was partialled out. This indicates a common factor underlying individual differences in the span and running memory tasks, not related to articulation proficiency. Alternative approaches to the span—articulation proficiency relationships are discussed, including the possibility that span and articulation develop as separate facets of a common system.

Recall of enacted and nonenacted instructions compared: forgetting functions

SummaryThree experiments are reported in which under one condition subjects were given instructions to perform a series of acts (SPTs) and to remember the acts performed, and under a second condition were asked to remember the same verbal instructions without being required to perform any acts. Different groups of subjects were tested at different retention intervals. The forgetting curves for the two conditions differ with respect to intercept, but are similar in slope. The similarity in slope for the two conditions is present irrespective of differences in intercept. Several methodological issues are discussed as well as the nature of the relationship between recall of SPTs and verbal instructions.

The role of duration in memory and metamemory of enacted instructions (SPTs)

SummarySubjects enacted two series of tasks as instructed (subject-performed tasks, or SPTs). The enactions were of either short (5-s) or long (30-s) duration. The long en actions were either repetitive (e.g.,bounce a ball several times) or else nonrepetitive (e. g.,stand up, walk round the room, open the door, look out, close the door, sit down). During presentation, subjects were to rate the probability of recall of each SPT in a subsequent free-recall test. The long SPTs were given higher recall ratings than the short SPTs, but the subjects did not differentiate between the repetitive and the nonrepetitive items. Recall mirrored the ratings; the long SPTs were recalled more frequently than the short ones, with no difference between the repetitive and the nonrepetitive items. The metamemory results are discussed in relation to the notion that the memory-monitoring system is sensitive to quantitative, but not to qualitative, differences in encoding.

The effects of interference tasks on recency in the free recall of action events.

SummaryLists of verbal instructions were read aloud and each was enacted either by the subject (SPTs) or by the experimenter (EPTs). In Experiment 1 free recall was made of lists of SPTs and EPTs either immediately after presentation, after an empty 20-s delay interval, or after a 20-s delay interval filled with backward counting. The recall of recency items was unaffected by the empty delay interval, but was somewhat reduced by the counting task. In Experiment 2 free recall was made of lists of SPTs and EPTs either immediately after presentation or after a delay that was filled with a single SPT or a single EPT, 20 s in length. The recency effect evident in the immediate-recall condition was virtually wiped out in the delay conditions, irrespective of whether the delay task matched those in the free-recall list or not. These results are discussed in terms of the mnemonic similarity of the two types of action event.

Critical processes in serial short-term memory: A developmental study ☆

Abstract Two experiments are described which were designed to test the possible involvement of two operations in developmental auditory serial short-term memory (SSTM), namely rehearsal proficiency and item identification. The experiments provided mainly negative support for the notion that these operations are critical in developmental SSTM. As an alternative, the possibility that developmental differences in SSTM might have their origins in the processing of speech sound patterns was discussed.

The Reading/Short-Term Memory Relationship: Implications of an Exception

It is suggested that reading and short-term memory are related through the use of a common processing system dealing with phonological information. This supposition allows for children with difficulties in: reading, arithmetic, STM, or any combination of these skills. Irrespective of the particular model favoured, it is shown that children with deficient STMs can become proficient readers. The precise explanation of this phenomenon, however, remains to be given.