Conley, Shannon L. (2020) Facilitative and disruptive phonological item interactions in short-term memory: transient or not? Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Words that sound the same have been shown to disrupt recall in short-term memory due to phonological similarity effects. Research suggests these effects are short-lasting, but subsequent studies have not attempted to verify this. Emerging evidence also suggests phonological similarity effects may also facilitate recall, but these findings have not been studied against a control. An experimental cued recall memory task was administered to a convenience sample of 49 Australian adults aged 18 to 61-years-of-age (M age = 41.35, SD = 11.84), comprising 34 females and 15 males. Half were allocated to an immediate recall condition and half to a 3 s delayed recall condition. A 3 x 2 mixed ANOVA found that, as expected, phonological codes facilitated recall when the target was primed and disrupted recall when the foil was primed. Contrary to expectations there was no significant difference in priming effects with priming evident in both immediate and delayed recall. Results strengthen confidence in previous findings of facilitative effects from phonological item interactions in STM. Results also raise questions about the transience of phonological codes and current explanations for forgetting in STM. Interference in immediate recall finds limited capacity theories lacking in explanatory power. However, item interaction effects in delayed recall has implications for Tehan and Humphreys (1995, 1998) cues plus codes approach and Tehan and Fallon’s (1999) distributed storage memory model. Potential theoretical explanations and directions for future research are discussed
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Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
Supervisors: | Gerry Tehan |
Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2025 04:44 |
Last Modified: | 08 Jul 2025 04:44 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Phonological codes; STM; short-term memory; cued recall; transience; proactive interference; item interactions; similarity effects; limited capacity store; cues plus; codes approach; distributed storage. |
Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52220 |
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