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Syntax and serial recall: How language supports short-term memory for
order
Nick Perham a; John E. Marsh b; Dylan M. Jones bc
a
University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, Cardiff, UK b Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK c University of
Western Australia, Perth, Australia
First published on: 10 January 2009
To cite this Article Perham, Nick, Marsh, John E. and Jones, Dylan M.(2009) 'Syntax and serial recall: How language
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THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
2009, 62 (7), 1285 – 1293
Short article
Syntax and serial recall: How language supports
short-term memory for order
Nick Perham
University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, Cardiff, UK
John E. Marsh
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Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Dylan M. Jones
Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, and University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
The extent to which familiar syntax supports short-term serial recall of visually presented six-item
sequences was shown by the superior recall of lists in which item pairs appeared in the order of “adjective– noun” (items 1 – 2, 3 – 4, 5– 6)—congruent with English syntax—compared to when the order of
items within pairs was reversed. The findings complement other evidence suggesting that short-term
memory is an assemblage of language processing and production processes more than it is a bespoke
short-term memory storage system.
Keywords: Short-term memory; Language; Syntax; Serial recall.
Structuralist accounts constitute the received view
of short-term memory: constructs such as storage,
decay, and interference within a system of processing modules—buffers or stores—and their
subsequent interplay account for most short-term
memory phenomena (e.g., Baddeley, 1986;
Neath, 2000; Salamé & Baddeley, 1982).
However, an alternative view is emerging which
conceives short-term memory as being, not a structural processing primitive, but parasitic on language
processing and production (e.g., Gupta &
MacWhinney, 1997; Jones, Hughes, & Macken,
2006; Martin & Saffran, 1997). A key finding in
support of this view is that recall of a list of words
is dramatically increased when those words form a
meaningful sentence in which all words follow
English syntax (e.g., “the dog sat on the mat”)
compared to a list of words that do not (e.g., “sat
the on mat dog the”: Brener, 1940; Jefferies,
Lambon Ralph, & Baddeley, 2004). However,
few studies demonstrate increased recall when
only a proportion of the words exhibit syntactic
familiarity (e.g., “the dog mat sat on the”), a result
that speaks to the role of syntactic familiarity of
Correspondence should be addressed to Nick Perham, School of Psychology, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, Cardiff CF5
2YB, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
# 2009 The Experimental Psychology Society
http://www.psypress.com/qjep
1285
DOI:10.1080/17470210802635599
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PERHAM, MARSH, JONES
the list independent of its semantic coherence.
In this paper, we provide evidence that supports
language-based accounts using recall performance
of syntactically familiar and unfamiliar word pairs.
More specifically, we explore whether lists comprising three syntactically familiar word pairs,
rather than a complete meaningful sentence, are
easier to recall than lists that have syntactically
unfamiliar pairs. According to language-based
accounts of short-term memory, item pairs consistent with English syntactic rules should elicit
superior recall performance compared to item
pairs that do not, whereas, in contrast, more structuralist formulations of short-term memory predict
no such difference.
The standard view of short-term memory has
been conceptualized as a “processing primitive”
in which to-be-remembered items are temporarily
retained in a number of stores that provide support
for many other higher-order cognitive functions,
such as problem-solving, reasoning, language
comprehension, and language learning (e.g.,
Baddeley, 1986, 2007). Commonly, this has been
operationalized through the paradigm of verbal
serial recall in which, typically, a list of 5– 8
items (digits, letters, or words) is required to be
recalled in strict serial order immediately following
their presentation or a short—around 10second—retention interval (Baddeley, 1986). The
functional character of forgetting is largely
accounted for in terms of the fate of individual
items through “interference” (their similarity to
other items) and decay over time.
Language-based accounts of verbal short-term
memory are based upon how the retention of
item information is inextricably bound with linguistic representations and language—particularly
speech—production (e.g., Hughes, Marsh, &
Jones, 2008; Jones, Hughes, & Macken, 2006;
Martin & Saffran, 1997; Martin, Lesch, &
Bartha, 1999). Common to these accounts is that
the comprehension and production of languagebased information are also involved in the
retention of information in the short term: that
is, the semantic representations and/or motoric
gestures inherent with language comprehension
and production are also utilized during the
1286
retention and subsequent output of recently
processed material.
Long-term knowledge is manifested in a variety
of short-term memory phenomena. Recall is better:
for words than for non-words (lexicality effect,
Crowder, 1978), for high-frequency words than
for low-frequency words (frequency effect,
Watkins, 1977) and for phonotactically legitimate
consonant clusters than for impermissible ones
(e.g., RT compared with ZP: bigram frequency
effect, Mayzner & Schoenberg, 1964). Of more
direct relevance to the current study is the observation that lists comprising words with greater
approximations to the English language are better
recalled than word sequences whose approximation
to English language is far less (Miller & Selfridge,
1951). Higher-order approximations contain more
meaningful information and are closer to the syntax
of the English language. Furthermore, recent work
shows that regularities in the sequence structure of
artificial grammar facilitates short-term memory
performance as well as increasing error rates
(Botvinick & Bylsma, 2005). Linguistic knowledge
supports the retrieval of sequential structure, that is,
the more closely item order reflects the grammatical
order in written and spoken English, the more
likely they are to be correctly recalled in order.
Although there are demonstrations of better
recall for highly probable sequences created from
an artificial grammar and the bigram frequency
effect, few studies have actually established
superior performance for non-sentence word-lists
comprising examples of syntactically familiar
words compared with those that do not. That is,
superior recall of syntactically familiar word-lists
is typically shown using sentences in which all
words exhibit familiar syntax (Brener, 1940;
Jefferies et al., 2004) yet one would also predict
the facilitation of recall with lists comprising a
smaller proportion of syntactically familiar items.
This may provide important insights into the
degree of sequential regularity required for
language-learning.
This study examines serial recall performance of
6-item word-lists comprising either adjective–
noun or noun–adjective pairings. The advantage
of using word pairings rather than sentences is
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SYNTAX IN SERIAL RECALL
that they can be more fully examined by testing the
reversal of their constituents. That is, word-pairings
can be further examined by reversing their order
(e.g., “stingy hallway” to “hallway stingy”) so that
each adjective–noun pairing acts as its own
control when it is reversed to become a noun–adjective pairing. Although this reversal could also be
applied to adjective–noun pairs within sentences,
the context of the sentence may further help to
facilitate recall (e.g., “the brown fox jumped over
the wall” to “the fox brown jumped over the
wall”). These materials neatly capture the tension
between the syntactic knowledge inherent in the
English language and the specific demands of the
primary task to recall in strict presentation order.
Typically, nouns and adjectives are paired
together in the English language such that the
adjective precedes the noun as in “robust butter”
which, despite being semantically implausible, is
more familiar than the reverse pairing of “butter
robust”. Given this disparity in occurrence it is
predicted that recall of adjective –noun pairings
will be greater than that of noun – adjective
pairings (version A). In Condition B, we predict
the same pattern of results using exactly the same
word lists but with the order in the word pairings
reversed.
Method
Participants
Thirty-nine undergraduate students from Cardiff
University participated in exchange for course
credit or a small honorarium. All participants
reported normal hearing and vision, were aged
between 18 and 25 years and were native English
speakers.
Materials
The stimuli for the serial recall task were created
using SuperLab Pro and presented via a Samsung
Syncmaster 171S PC. The to-be-recalled materials
consisted of 24 lists of 6 phonologically dissimilar
words (see Appendix) with each list comprising
three noun – adjective or three adjective – noun,
pairings written in black Times New Roman
(font size 72 pt) on a white screen. The mean
number of syllables for the noun – adjective lists
was 11.25 and 11.33 for the adjective – noun lists.
Frequency and imageability were not measured
but was controlled for by reversing all pairings in
version B. To minimise the effect of participants’
background knowledge on recall, all adjective –
noun pairings were implausible (as chosen by the
authors), with plausible pairings, for example
“curved banana”, not included.
All words were presented at the rate of one item
every 700 ms. Given that adjective – noun pairings
are more frequent, and therefore more often
articulated, in the English language than noun –
adjective pairings, participants would be more
likely to rehearse lists comprising alternating
adjectives and nouns (as both lists do) according
to the former pairing. That is, for both list types,
participants were encouraged to rehearse items in
either adjective – noun or noun – adjective pairings.
However, in noun –adjective lists—in which the
order of the six items was “noun, adjective, noun,
adjective, noun, adjective”—the syntactic information could have promoted rehearsal of adjective – nouns rather than noun – adjectives. This
would obviously be problematic as it would potentially negate the impact of the noun –adjective
pairing upon recall. Therefore, to minimise this
possibility, and to maximise the likelihood that
participants rehearsed the item pairs according to
the appropriate experimental manipulation,
inter-item intervals of 1 s were inserted between
items 2 and 3, and 4 and 5, which emphasised
the association between these pairs (a pilot study,
in which this grouping cue was absent failed to
promote rehearsal of the appropriate pairings).
Design
A mixed design was adopted with version (A or B)
as the between-participant variable and list type
(noun – adjective or adjective –noun) and serial
position (1 to 6) as the within participant variables.
Procedure
Participants were tested individually, or in small
groups of up to six people, and were seated at a
viewing distance of approximately 60 cm from the
PC monitor. A total of 24 six-item word-sequences
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PERHAM, MARSH, JONES
were presented. After the presentation of each list,
participants had a 10 s retention interval followed
by 15 s to recall the items in the presentation
order on response forms. Each form contained a
grid of 6 spaces within which to write each item.
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Results
Recall performance was scored to a strict serial
recall criterion: an item was only scored as correct
only if it was recalled in its presentation position.
As predicted, recall was better for adjective – noun
lists (see Figures 1 and 2). Order errors tend to
dominate in this type of setting, hence the analysis
of other types of errors was not undertaken.
A 2 (version) 2 (list type) 6 (serial position)
mixed ANOVA was conducted. Serial position was
included in the analysis as it allows the localisation
of errors. For example, typically very few errors
occur at the position of the first item in a serial
recall list regardless of the experimental manipulation. The 3-way ANOVA revealed significant
main effects of list type and serial position, F(1,
37) ¼ 28.76, MSE ¼ 0.96, p , .01 and F(5,
185) ¼ 27.94, MSE ¼ 0.93, p , .01 respectively,
but not version, F(1, 37) ¼ 0.89, MSE ¼ 0.21,
p . .05. The significant main effects demonstrated that adjective –noun lists were better
recalled than noun –adjective lists. The overall
shape of the serial position curves is typical for
verbal recall (e.g., Hughes et al., 2008; Jones
et al., 2006).
Figure 1. Version 1: Proportion of correct serial recall by list type
and serial position.
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Figure 2. Version 2: Proportion of correct serial recall by list type
and serial position.
Significant interactions were observed between
list type and serial position, and between version,
serial position and list type. Simple effects analyses
(LSD) for the three-way interaction revealed
significant differences between versions for adjective – noun lists at positions 2, 3, and 4, however,
no such differences were observed for noun –
adjective lists. This seems to reflect a difference
between the two sets of populations for the adjective – noun list. However, this did not alter the
overall increased recall for adjective – noun over
noun –adjective lists.
Additional simple effects analyses (LSD)
revealed significant differences between lists for
positions 2, 5, and 6 in version A and positions
2, 3, 4, and 6 for version B reflecting a general
increase in recall for adjective – noun over noun –
adjective lists from position 2 to 6. Effectively
the difference between list type is not present at
every position and these positions are slightly
different for each version. However, of the
twelve positions in both versions all bar two
showed increased performance in the adjective –
noun list (performance in the other two positions
was equal) and seven of those reached significance.
The lack of a significant difference between list
type at position 1 suggests a primacy effect in
which the first item was equally well recalled
regardless of list type. Other simple effects analyses
(LSD) also revealed significant differences
between serial positions on each list type for
both versions which reflects the typical serial
recall curve observed with serial recall experiments.
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Figure 1 also suggests that serial recall performance for each list type differs according to the identity of the item. However, word type could not be
included in the previous analysis as it was not fully
counterbalanced with respect to list type, which it
subsumed. That is, each word type (adjective or
noun) could not possibly be in both positions of
each word pairing as the lists are comprised of
specific orders of word types—adjective – noun
lists comprised adjective, noun, adjective, noun,
adjective, noun and noun –adjective lists comprised
noun, adjective, noun, adjective, noun, adjective.
Thus, we removed list type as a variable to
examine word type. The resulting three-way
ANOVA revealed significant main effects of
word type and serial position, F(1, 37) ¼ 31.38,
MSE ¼ 0.27, p , .001 and F(5, 185) ¼ 27.94,
MSE ¼ 0.93, p , .001 respectively, but not of
version, F(1, 37) ¼ 0.89, MSE ¼ 0.21, p . .05.
Nouns were better recalled than adjectives and performance followed the typical serial recall curve.
Significant interactions were observed between
word type and serial position, and between word
type, serial position and version. Simple effects
analyses (LSD) for this three-way interaction
showed a significant difference between versions
at position three for adjectives and positions two
and four for nouns. As mentioned previously,
this is more than likely due to different samples
within each version. Also, significant differences
were observed between serial positions for each
word type in each version. These are consistent
with the general differences inherent in the
typical serial recall curve.
Of more interest are the differences between
word types at each position for both versions.
When the noun was at the end of a pairing (as
they are in adjective – noun lists on positions 2, 4,
and 6), performance was significantly greater for
nouns than for adjectives for both versions—
although it was only approaching significance for
position 4 in version A, p ¼ .053. In contrast,
in four of the two occasions when the noun was at
the start of a pairing (as they are in noun–adjective
lists on positions 1, 3, and 5), there was no significant difference between the word types—
although nouns were significantly better recalled
than adjectives on position five in version A and
position three in version B. Interestingly, at no
position in either version were adjectives better
recalled than nouns.
Discussion
This study successfully demonstrates differential
syntactic order effects on the serial recall of sixitem lists. Specifically, recall performance of
adjective – noun lists was superior to that of
noun –adjective lists even when the order of the
items within each pair (adjective – noun or
noun –adjective) was reversed (version A compared with version B) which shows that the
results are not due to any confound in the
materials. These results appear to be better
accounted for by a language-based account of
short-term memory rather than any structuralist
account. Further, we argue that these results are
best viewed in the light of the recent perceptualgestural account of short-term memory phenomena (Jones et al., 2006).
The retention of information over the short
term has long been considered to reflect the properties of a capacity-limited store whereby impaired
recall reflects 1) time-based decay of to-beremembered representations and 2) confusion of
phonologically similar items within the phonological store (Baddeley, 1986). On this approach,
forgetting emphasises impairment to the individual items within the list from interference—from
similar list items or item features (or irrelevant
auditory items if they are presented)—or timebased decay (Baddeley, 1986; Neath, 2000).
Given this focus upon impairment at the level of
the individual item, it is difficult to view how
structuralist accounts can explain the data from
the current experiments. Impairment could not
have arisen through phonological confusion from
either to-be-recalled items (as this was controlled
for during construction of the lists) nor would
one expect any more feature overwriting with
noun –adjective lists as compared with adjective –
noun lists (see Neath, 2000). Thus, classic
accounts of short-term memory based upon the
idea of a short-term memory store independent
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PERHAM, MARSH, JONES
of any role for long-term knowledge fail to account
for the findings reported here.
However, language-based accounts emphasise
the influence of both semantic representations
and/or motoric gestures upon recall and place particular importance on the sequence of the to-berecalled items (e.g., Hughes et al., 2008; Jones
et al., 2006; Martin & Saffran, 1997; Martin et al.,
1999). That is, impairment occurs at the level of
the sequence of items within the list as determined
by the level of interference from knowledge regarding the semantic and syntactic associations inherent
in the planning and articulation of speech. With
regard to the current experiments, sequences
which closely matched the syntactic ordering in
the English speech (adjective–nouns) facilitated
recall performance compared to those that did not
(noun–adjective). Further, it is only these accounts
that successfully predict recall facilitation through
the presentation and rehearsal of adjective–noun
pairings and related findings (e.g., Mayzner &
Schoenberg, 1964; Miller & Selfridge, 1951).
Language-based accounts, however, can be
generally divided into those that maintain an alliance to the classic structuralist view of short-term
memory but now allow interactions with longterm knowledge (e.g., Baddeley, 2002; Gupta &
MacWhinney, 1997) and that which assumes
long-term knowledge is actually the basis for
short-term memory (e.g., Jones et al., 2006;
Woodward, Macken, & Jones, 2008). We favour
this latter approach which suggests that shortterm memory is parasitic upon perceptual and
motor skills (such as speech habits that arise
from one’s use of language) that are already part
of long-term knowledge rather than the operation
of bespoke stores and processes.
In the context of verbal serial short-term
memory, sequences composed of numbers or
letters are, by design, stripped of any grammatical–semantic or syntactic structure that could
support serial order. As such, the processes that
are usually responsible for the planning and
execution of speech are co-opted in the service of
retaining the to-be-remembered sequences and
these underpin performance of the task. Indeed, it
just so happens that, coincidentally, there already
1290
exists a plethora of skills, habits and long-term
knowledge involved in language use that when coopted can do an extremely good job of reproducing
the order of the to-be-recalled sequence.
However, it is precisely these actions that can
also impact upon the same processes and ultimately
damage short-term memory performance. Support
for this idea comes from a number of recent studies
(e.g., Hughes et al., 2008; Woodward et al., 2008)
and that the errors in natural speech, commonly
called Spoonerisms in which elements of items or
items in the to-be-recalled sequence are transposed
(e.g., “the death of his son from leukaemia” and “the
death of leukaemia from his son”) are very similar to
those observed during serial recall performance
(e.g., Bock & Huitema, 1999; Ellis, 1980).
Additionally, interference may also come from
phonologically or semantically irrelevant items—
“part of a community” and “part of a committee”,
and “I like berries with my cereal” and “I like
berries with my fruit” (Bock & Huitema, 1999).
On this account, the role of rehearsal, then, is reformulated from reactivating degrading to-be-recalled
items in a more structuralist approach to providing
a medium in which a sequence of items can be constrained by through the use of such speech properties as co-articulation, intonation and prosody
(Woodward et al., 2008). In the current experiments, the mismatch between the order of items
in the to-be-recalled lists and the syntactic order
inherent in the English language impedes the
ability to produce and articulate a successful rehearsal cohort compared to a the successful match
between long-term knowledge and demand
characteristics. That is, the ease with which a
rehearsal cohort can be constructed is marred—by
either introducing an incorrect rehearsal sequence
or making it more difficult to rehearse the correct
sequence—through the conflict between opposing
order information from the sequence in the list
(butter robust) and the more familiar syntactic
order in the English language (robust butter).
Further, the current study shows that short-term
memory can be affected by less grammatical incongruence than a reordered sentence (Miller &
Selfridge, 1951) which may demonstrate the sensitivity of the language-learning ability in infants.
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Indeed, this may be a prelude to exploring simple
stress patterns and the way they promote list grouping and retrieval.
In sum, we have shown that the syntactic construction of a list of words dramatically affects
serial recall performance: when it is congruent
with the syntax of the English language, as in adjective–noun lists, performance is significantly better
than when the list is constructed of noun–adjective
pairings. Presumably this finding should be reversed
when the noun–adjective ordering is more congruent with syntax as it is in the Welsh language. Shortterm memory, then, may best be conceived as a
sequence-based process in which the syntactic
knowledge and articulatory skills associated with
language comprehension and production facilitate
recall performance by making it easier to assemble
a rehearsal cohort when they are congruent with
to-be-remembered information.
Original manuscript received 4 August 2008
Accepted revision received 30 October 2008
First published online 10 January 2009
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APPENDIX
Word lists for Version A
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Noun – adjective lists
window
salmon
goldfish
cheetah
shark
engine
sheep
leg
cabinet
gloves
cod
eagle
itchy
naughty
tired
ashamed
dizzy
nervous
jolly
quiet
scrawny
flattering
defiant
fancy
penguin
toe
vinegar
ostrich
puffin
daisy
shirt
knuckle
axle
linen
dress
motor
rainy
slimy
weary
cool
crooked
breakable
roasted
soft
sweet
wooden
jittery
cloudy
tonsil
lamp
jacket
elbow
wine
tie
hand
garlic
mirror
scarf
balcony
sunflower
misty
cheerful
hollow
scary
selfish
salty
afraid
square
foolish
blushing
convincing
flat
Adjective – noun lists
watery
insulting
graceful
lucky
witty
faithful
wicked
honest
bright
happy
zany
striped
lion
roof
cider
haddock
dolphin
corduroy
deer
cotton
neck
bra
bourbon
tabasco
stormy
innocent
stingy
silly
deep
mushy
vast
robust
stupid
greasy
jealous
busy
banana
stomach
hallway
closet
elephant
belt
battery
butter
goat
heart
apricot
falcon
defeated
chubby
fluffy
loose
red
low
average
slippery
clumsy
breezy
tense
curly
coat
lily
cow
table
tequila
carnation
sugar
horse
head
pig
brandy
bed
misty
cheerful
hollow
scary
selfish
salty
afraid
square
foolish
blushing
convincing
flat
tonsil
lamp
jacket
elbow
wine
tie
hand
garlic
mirror
scarf
balcony
sunflower
Word lists for Version B
Adjective – noun lists
itchy
naughty
tired
ashamed
dizzy
nervous
jolly
quiet
scrawny
flattering
defiant
fancy
1292
window
salmon
goldfish
cheetah
shark
engine
sheep
leg
cabinet
gloves
cod
eagle
rainy
slimy
weary
cool
crooked
breakable
roasted
soft
sweet
wooden
jittery
cloudy
penguin
toe
vinegar
ostrich
puffin
daisy
shirt
knuckle
axle
linen
dress
motor
THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2009, 62 (7)
SYNTAX IN SERIAL RECALL
Noun– adjective lists
watery
insulting
graceful
lucky
witty
faithful
wicked
honest
bright
happy
zany
striped
banana
stomach
hallway
closet
elephant
belt
battery
butter
goat
heart
apricot
falcon
stormy
innocent
stingy
silly
deep
mushy
vast
robust
stupid
greasy
jealous
busy
coat
lily
cow
table
tequila
carnation
sugar
horse
head
pig
brandy
bed
defeated
chubby
fluffy
loose
red
low
average
slippery
clumsy
breezy
tense
curly
Downloaded By: [Swets Content Distribution] At: 17:16 16 March 2010
lion
roof
cider
haddock
dolphin
corduroy
deer
cotton
neck
bra
bourbon
tabasco
THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2009, 62 (7)
1293