The detrimental effect of semantic similarity in short-term memory tasks: A meta-regression approach
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THEORETICAL REVIEW
The detrimental effect of semantic similarity in short-term memory tasks: A meta-regression approach Sho Ishiguro 1,2
&
Satoru Saito 1
Accepted: 6 September 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract The literature suggests that semantic similarity has a weak or null effect for immediate serial reconstruction and a facilitative effect for immediate serial recall. These observed semantic similarity effects are inconsistent with the assumptions of short-term memory (STM) models on the detrimental effect of similarity (e.g., confusion) and with observations of a robust detrimental effect of phonological similarity. Our review indicates that the experimental results are likely dependent on the manipulation strength for semantic similarity and that manipulations used in previous studies might have affected semantic assvociation as well as semantic similarity. To address these possible issues, two indices are proposed: (a) strength of manipulation on semantic similarity, gained by quantifying semantic similarity based on Osgood and associates’ dimensional view of semantics, and (b) inter-item associative strength, a possible confounding factor. Our review and the results of a meta-regression analysis using these two indices suggest that semantic similarity has a detrimental effect on both serial reconstruction and serial recall, while semantic association, which is correlated with semantic similarity, contributes to an apparent facilitative effect. An effect that is not attributable to similarity or association was also implied. Review on item and order memory further suggests the facilitative effect of semantic association on item memory and the detrimental effect of the semantic similarity on order memory. Based on our findings, we propose a unified explanation of observations of semantic similarity effects for both serial reconstruction and serial recall that is in good accord with STM models. Keywords Semantic similarity . Short-term memory . Semantic association . Meta-regression
Introduction The similarity effect on short-term memory (STM) refers to a phenomenon in which the similarity of stimulus properties affects STM performance. STM models generally assume a detrimental effect of similarity (for a review, see Hurlstone, Hitch, & Baddeley, 2014), based on the premise that similarity leads to confusion at retrieval (e.g., the primacy model, Page & Norris, 1998). The SOB (serial order in a box) model (e.g., Farrell, 2006) incorporates the additional premise that similarity decreases encoding weight at encoding. In line with the * Sho Ishiguro [email protected] * Satoru Saito [email protected] 1
Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
2
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan
assumption of the detrimental effect of similarity generally, the detrimental effect of phonological similarity is well replicated using both the serial reconstruction task and the serial recall task (Baddeley
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