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Related Experiment Videos

The word-length effect and disyllabic words.

P Lovatt1, S E Avons, J Masterson

  • 1University of Essex, U.K. PJL31@cam.ac.uk

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology
|March 16, 2000
PubMed
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Short words are not reliably better recalled than long words in memory span tasks. This challenges theories linking memory capacity to word duration or phonological decay rates.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Experimental Psychology

Background:

  • The word-length effect suggests shorter words are recalled better in memory span tasks.
  • Previous research often used word sets with uncontrolled differences, potentially confounding results.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the reliable effect of spoken word duration on immediate serial recall of disyllabic words.
  • To test whether previous findings of a word-length effect in disyllables were due to uncontrolled item differences.

Main Methods:

  • Compared immediate serial recall of long- and short-duration disyllabic words across three experiments.
  • Controlled for word frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, phoneme count, and semantic associations.
  • Utilized auditory/visual presentation and spoken/picture-pointing recall measures.

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Main Results:

  • Experiments 1a and 1b showed better recall for long words.
  • Experiments 2a and 2b found no difference in recall between long and short words.
  • Experiment 3 replicated a prior finding of better short-word recall, but only with the original word set.

Conclusions:

  • There is no consistent advantage for short-duration disyllables in memory span tasks.
  • Previous word-length effect findings may stem from accidental item differences, not duration itself.
  • The results question theories attributing memory span capacity to item duration or phonological decay rates.