Ranschburg unrepeated

In verbal working memory, the second occurrence of an item in a memory list generally leads to impaired recall performance, a phenomenon called the "inhibitory Ranschburg effect." Current working memory models explain this inhibitory effect via response suppression, a mechanism by which an item is removed from the set of retrieval candidates once recalled. Hence, according to this theoretical explanation, the inhibitory effect depends on the order in which the repeated item is recalled. It therefore follows that the inhibitory effect should be observed for the first occurrence of an item when items are recalled backward. The purpose of the present study was twofold. First, we aimed at determining the generality of the inhibitory effect by extending it to the visuospatial domain. Second, we tested the response suppression assumption using a forward/backward recall procedure. After a first unsuccessful attempt to replicate the inhibitory Ranschburg effect using visuospatial stimuli, we sought to replicate the original effect using verbal materials. An additional series of six experiments failed to consistently replicate the inhibitory Ranschburg effect. Simulations show that if the inhibitory Ranschburg effect exists, it is unlikely to be explained by response suppression. The present study questions the importance of the Ranschburg effect for models of working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).