Subject uncertainty and word-class effects in short-term memory for sentences.

Abstract

The effect of memory-capacity release, determined by whether sentence subjects were low-uncertainty pronouns or high-uncertainty animate nouns, on sentence recall was studied at 0-, 10-, and 30-sec retention intervals in the Peterson short-term memory (STM) situation. Ss were 60 female undergraduates. Verbatim recall of pronoun sentences was markedly superior to that for noun sentences; but although there were striking word-class forgetting effects, the proportion distribution of these effects was little affected either by subject uncertainty or by retention interval. The indentity of word-class effects over retention intervals indicates selective processing at the time of input. Error pattern evidence is offered for the hypothesis that recall is a constructive process. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)