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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 31, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
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Retroactive interference in short-term memory and the word-length effect.

Guillermo Campoy1

  • 1Universidad de Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, Facultad de Psicología, 30100 Murcia, Spain. gcampoy@um.es

Acta Psychologica
|June 28, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Long words cause more memory interference than short words. This study shows longer words disrupt short-term memory (STM) more, supporting interference-based explanations for the word-length effect.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • The word-length effect describes how longer words are harder to recall in short-term memory (STM).
  • Previous theories suggested this effect might be due to articulatory duration or phonological complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if the word-length effect in STM is caused by increased retroactive interference from longer words.
  • To test an interference-based account for the word-length effect.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Used auditory word lists with articulatory suppression, varying the length of interfering words following to-be-remembered words.
  • Experiment 2: Employed a recent-probes task to assess proactive interference, manipulating the length of words in preceding trials.

Main Results:

  • Experiment 1 showed impaired memory performance when to-be-remembered words were followed by long interfering words.
  • Experiment 2 indicated reduced proactive interference with longer words in preceding trials, suggesting greater displacement of STM content.
  • Both experiments demonstrated that longer words induce greater retroactive interference than shorter words.

Conclusions:

  • The findings support an interference-based explanation for the word-length effect in short-term memory.
  • Longer words generate more retroactive interference, impacting memory recall and retention.