WORD-FREQUENCY EFFECTS ON SHORT-TERM-MEMORY TASKS - EVIDENCE FOR A REDINTEGRATION PROCESS IN IMMEDIATE SERIAL-RECALL

Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advan tage enjoyed by high-frequency words in short-term memory tasks. Exper iment 1 demonstrated effects of word frequency on memory span that wer e independent of differences in speech rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showe d that word frequency has an increasing effect on serial recall across serial positions, but Experiment 4 showed that this effect was abolis hed for backward recall. A model that includes a redintegration proces s that operates to ''clean up'' decayed short-term memory traces is pr oposed, and the multinomial processing tree model described by R. Schw eickert (1993) is used to provide a quantitative fit to data from Expe riments 2, 3, and 4.