Frequency Effects and Semantic and Acoustic Recoding in List Searching

Abstract

RECALL in a short-term memory (STM) experiment is a function of the meaningfulness and familiarity of the material¹, its pronounceability², frequency³ and the ordered or scrambled arrangement of related items^4–6. Similar effects could occur during the scanning of visually presented lists, and we report three experiments where this is examined. In list searching, a subject typically scans down a column of material (list items) for a designated target. The list items are usually letters or words and the targets, single or multiple, are designated beforehand either as one or more letters or as a concept or category an instance of which has to be detected. The item processing time is determined by dividing the search time by the number of items scanned.