Serial Position Research Articles

The Interaction Between the Production Effect and Serial Position in Recognition and Recall.

In memory tasks, items read aloud are better remembered than their silently read counterparts. This production effect is often interpreted by assuming a distinctiveness benefit for produced items, but whether this benefit also comes at a cost remains up for debate. In recall tasks, when pure lists are used in which all items are produced or read silently, studies have shown a better recall of produced items at the last serial positions, but a lower recall at the first positions. This cost of production has been interpreted by assuming that production interferes with rehearsal. However, in recognition tasks, models typically assume that the distinctiveness benefit for produced items comes at no cost. Across four experiments, participants completed a 2AFC recognition test, an old-new recognition test or an immediate serial recall test. List length was also manipulated. Results show that although the production effect is larger at the last serial positions, the cross-over interaction between the production effect and serial position observed in recall was not present in recognition. These results suggest that task-related differences in the production effect may inform us about the modulation of basic memory processes by task demands.

Transitive inference as probabilistic preference learning.

Transitive inference (TI) is a cognitive task that assesses an organism's ability to infer novel relations between items based on previously acquired knowledge. TI is known for exhibiting various behavioral and neural signatures, such as the serial position effect (SPE), symbolic distance effect (SDE), and the brain's capacity to maintain and merge separate ranking models. We propose a novel framework that casts TI as a probabilistic preference learning task, using one-parameter Mallows models. We present a series of simulations that highlight the effectiveness of our novel approach. We show that the Mallows ranking model natively reproduces SDE and SPE. Furthermore, extending the model using Bayesian selection showcases its capacity to generate and merge ranking hypotheses as pairs with connecting symbols. Finally, we employ neural networks to replicate Mallows models, demonstrating how this framework aligns with observed prefrontal neural activity during TI. Our innovative approach sheds new light on the nature of TI, emphasizing the potential of probabilistic preference learning for unraveling its underlying neural mechanisms.

Verbal and Spatial Working Memory Capacity in Blind Adults and the Possible Influence of Age at Blindness Onset: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

The loss of a sense, such as vision, forces individuals to adapt to their environment and its demands in a variety of ways. In the case of blindness, significant neurofunctional and cognitive changes have been documented. However, there is no clear consensus on the differences in performance between adult blind participants and sighted controls in cognitive processes such as working memory (WM). Two variables are important, including the cognitive task used to measure working memory and the age at which vision loss occurs. This review is aimed at exploring potential disparities in verbal and spatial WM performance between blind and sighted adults, as well as understanding how these differences may be influenced by the age of vision loss. A systematic search across PsycArticles, PsycInfo, Medline, and Web of Science databases identified 21 pertinent studies. The studies were categorized, and effect sizes were calculated through meta-analysis, distinguishing between verbal (auditory simple forward and backward span, complex span, and n-back) and visuospatial WM tasks (adapted Corsi-block and simple storage tasks, imagery tasks, and complex storage tasks). Visual sensory loss induces adaptations affecting WM function in blind participants. In the verbal domain, improved phonological processing and/or serial item position encoding might facilitate WM retrieval. In contrast, in spatial WM, an over-reliance on serial processing may hinder strategic grouping in blind individuals. This review highlights the need to further explore the role of age at the time of vision loss. Although evidence suggests that adaptations to serial processing may be more pronounced in early development, particularly in comparison to those who become blind in adulthood, the available data are limited. The study calls for further research to deepen our understanding of cognitive adaptations and their temporal dynamics in response to vision loss.

A geometrical solution underlies general neural principle for serial ordering

A general mathematical description of how the brain sequentially encodes knowledge remains elusive. We propose a linear solution for serial learning tasks, based on the concept of mixed selectivity in high-dimensional neural state spaces. In our framework, neural representations of items in a sequence are projected along a “geometric” mental line learned through classical conditioning. The model successfully solves serial position tasks and explains behaviors observed in humans and animals during transitive inference tasks amidst noisy sensory input and stochastic neural activity. This approach extends to recurrent neural networks performing motor decision tasks, where the same geometric mental line correlates with motor plans and modulates network activity according to the symbolic distance between items. Serial ordering is thus predicted to emerge as a monotonic mapping between sensory input and behavioral output, highlighting a possible pivotal role for motor-related associative cortices in transitive inference tasks.

Assessment of verbal memory in Parkinson's disease utilizing a virtual reality-based Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is a commonly used tool for evaluating verbal learning and memory in neuropsychological assessments. In recent years, we developed a Virtual Reality (VR) adaptation of the RAVLT (VR-RVLT), aiming for increased ecological validity compared to the traditional pen and paper gold standard (GS-RAVLT). Following validation in healthy cohorts, the VR-RAVLT was validated with thirty individuals with Parkinson's Disease (PD) that completed both the GS-RAVLT and the VR- RAVLT. Validity of the VR-RAVLT was evaluated by assessing its construct and discriminant validity, and test–retest reliability, in comparison to the GS-RAVLT. Results of the PD participants were compared to those of 46 previously recruited healthy participants with comparable age and level of education. Main outcome measures derived from the remembered items on the test lists, exhibited significant and comparable correlations between VR-RAVLT and GS-RAVLT, both among healthy participants and PD participants. Likewise, serial position effects were similar for both formats amog the PD participants. Additionally, both formats showed similar discriminatory ability between healthy controls and PD participants, as well as comparable test–retest reliability measures. Taken together, the results suggest that the VR-based RAVLT is equally effective in measuring verbal memory capabilities in individuals with PD as compared to the GS-RAVLT. Certain results indicate that the virtual reality version has the capability to encompass additional factors that might impact memory performance, thereby suggesting an enhanced ecological validity.

Story recall performance and AT classification via positron emission tomography: A comparison of logical memory and Craft Story 21

BackgroundEarly detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the critical components of the global response to the growing dementia crisis. Analysis of serial position performance in story recall tests has yielded sensitive metrics for the prediction of AD at low cost. In this study, we examined whether serial position markers in two story recall tests (the logical memory test, LMT, and the Craft Story 21 test, CST) were sensitive to cross-sectional biomarker-based assessment of in vivo neuropathology. MethodsParticipants were selected from the Wisconsin Registry of Alzheimer's Prevention (n = 288; WRAP) and the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (n = 156; ADRC), both from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Average age at PET was 68.9 (6.7) and 67.0 (8.0), respectively. Data included tau and PiB PET, and LMT for WRAP participants and CST for ADRC participants. Two sets of Bayesian analyses (logistic regressions and ANCOVAs) were conducted within each cohort, separately. ResultsResults indicated that the A+T+ classification was best predicted, cross-sectionally, by the recency ratio (Rr), indexing how much of the end of the story was forgotten between initial learning and delayed assessment. Rr outperformed traditional scores and discriminated between A+T+ and A+T−/A-T-, in both cohorts. ConclusionsOverall, this study confirms that serial position analysis of LMT and CST data, and particularly Rr as an index of recency loss, is a valuable tool for the identification of in vivo tau pathology in individuals free of dementia. Diagnostic considerations are discussed.

Nested compressed co-representations of multiple sequential experiences during sleep.

Animals encounter and remember multiple experiences daily. During sleep, hippocampal neuronal ensembles replay past experiences and preplay future ones. Although most previous studies investigated p/replay of a single experience, it remains unclear how the hippocampus represents many experiences without major interference during sleep. By monitoring hippocampal neuronal ensembles as rats encountered 15 distinct linear track experiences, we uncovered principles for efficient multi-experience compressed p/replay representation. First, we found a serial position effect whereby the earliest and the most recent experiences had the strongest representations. Second, distinct experiences were co-represented in a multiplexed, flickering manner during nested p/replay events, which greatly enhanced the network's representational capacity. Third, spatially contiguous and disjunct track pairs were bound together into contiguous conjunctive representations during sleep. Finally, sequences spanning day-long multi-track experiences were p/replayed at hyper-compressed ratios during sleep. These coding schemes efficiently parallelize, bind and compress multiple sequential representations with reduced interference and enhanced capacity during sleep.

The synaptic correlates of serial position effects in sequential working memory.

Sequential working memory (SWM), referring to the temporary storage and manipulation of information in order, plays a fundamental role in brain cognitive functions. The serial position effect refers to the phenomena that recall accuracy of an item is associated to the order of the item being presented. The neural mechanism underpinning the serial position effect remains unclear. The synaptic mechanism of working memory proposes that information is stored as hidden states in the form of facilitated neuronal synapse connections. Here, we build a continuous attractor neural network with synaptic short-term plasticity (STP) to explore the neural mechanism of the serial position effect. Using a delay recall task, our model reproduces the the experimental finding that as the maintenance period extends, the serial position effect transitions from the primacy to the recency effect. Using both numerical simulation and theoretical analysis, we show that the transition moment is determined by the parameters of STP and the interval between presented stimulus items. Our results highlight the pivotal role of STP in processing the order information in SWM.

Data from “A Registered Report Testing the Effect of Sleep on DRM False Memory: Greater Lure and Veridical Recall but Fewer Intrusions After Sleep”

This paper describes a rich dataset from a registered report investigating sleep’s effect on false memory in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. 534 young adults completed free recall either shortly or 12 hours after studying lists of semantic associates (e.g., hospital, nurse). Collected online, our recall data showcase high data quality, replicating classic behavioural effects (e.g., serial position curve). The dataset contains raw recall data with original spelling and recall order, accompanied by demographic information (e.g., gender, time-of-day preference). Its versatility supports reuse in modelling memory decay and search processes, understanding lexical effects and individual differences, and benchmarking online memory studies.

Differentiation in social perception: Why later-encountered individuals are described more negatively.

According to the cognitive-ecological model of social perception, biases toward individuals can arise as by-products of cognitive principles that interact with the information ecology. The present work tested whether negatively biased person descriptions occur as by-products of cognitive differentiation. Later-encountered persons are described by their distinct attributes that differentiate them from earlier-encountered persons. Because distinct attributes tend to be negative, serial person descriptions should become increasingly negative. We found our predictions confirmed in six studies. In Study 1, descriptions of representatively sampled persons became increasingly distinct and negative with increasing serial positions of the target person. Study 2 eliminated this pattern of results by instructing perceivers to assimilate rather than differentiate a series of targets. Study 3 generalized the pattern from one-word descriptions of still photos of targets to multisentence descriptions of videos of targets. In line with the cognitive-ecological model, Studies 4-5b found that the relation between serial position and negativity was amplified among targets with similar positive attributes, zero among targets with distinct positive or negative attributes, and reversed among similar negative targets. Study 6 returned to representatively sampled targets and generalized the serial position-negativity effect from descriptions of the targets to overall evaluations of them. In sum, the present research provides strong evidence for the explanatory power of the cognitive-ecological model of social perception. We discuss theoretical and practical implications. It may pay off to appear early in an evaluation sequence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Gendered Memory Patterns: Unravelling Primacy and Recency Effects in Comparative Analysis

This experiment was done to see the impact of Primacy and recency Effect. Ebbinghaus demonstrated that in serial learning, words heard at the beginning and the end of the list are better memorized and recalled. It is a study that investigates in serial learning the primary effect reflects the output of the long-term store, whereas the recency effect reflects the output of short-term store. The Primacy and Recency Effect refers that items in the middle of the list are recalled poorly for at least two reasons, first they are so far from the end of list that they are not in the short-term store at the beginning of the retention test. Second, the subjects did not rehearse them extensively because only few items can be rehearsed at a time. The Primacy and Recency Effect Test requires individual to view a list of forty words, one word at a time for three seconds and asked to recall in any order. This Test demonstrates Primacy and Recency effect on recall and this outcome is called the serial position effect because the retention of an item depended upon the position effect in which it had been presented. The sample consist of total thirty subjects fifteen boys and fifteen girls. The subjects are graduate students of the age group sixteen-thirty, located in Hyderabad. In this study Simple Random Sampling is used.

Event-related theta and gamma band oscillatory dynamics during visuo-spatial sequence memory in younger and older adults.

Visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) for sequences is thought to be crucial for daily behaviors. Decades of research indicate that oscillations in the gamma and theta bands play important functional roles in the support of visuo-spatial working memory, but the vast majority of that research emphasizes measures of neural activity during memory retention. The primary aims of the present study were (1) to determine whether oscillatory dynamics in the Theta and Gamma ranges would reflect item-level sequence encoding during a computerized spatial span task, (2) to determine whether item-level sequence recall is also related to these neural oscillations, and (3) to determine the nature of potential changes to these processes in healthy cognitive aging. Results indicate that VSWM sequence encoding is related to later (∼700 ms) gamma band oscillatory dynamics and may be preserved in healthy older adults; high gamma power over midline frontal and posterior sites increased monotonically as items were added to the spatial sequence in both age groups. Item-level oscillatory dynamics during the recall of VSWM sequences were related only to theta-gamma phase amplitude coupling (PAC), which increased monotonically with serial position in both age groups. Results suggest that, despite a general decrease in frontal theta power during VSWM sequence recall in older adults, gamma band dynamics during encoding and theta-gamma PAC during retrieval play unique roles in VSWM and that the processes they reflect may be spared in healthy aging.

Process Approach in Memory Assessment of Patients With Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment:A Review

The process approach,a set of analytical methods used in neuropsychology,quantifies the word-list learning tests and conventional analytical methods and fully reflects the memory profile of the subject.Therefore,it is widely used in the memory assessment of patients with Alzheimer's disease(AD)and mild cognitive impairment(MCI).The common indices of process approach,such as learning slope,semantic clustering,serial position effects,discriminability,and response bias,are key components of memory assessment.This article reviews the application of common indices of process approach in memory assessment of AD and MCI patients and discusses the shortcomings and future research directions of process approach.

Working memory prioritisation effects in tactile immediate serial recall.

There is a growing body of evidence that higher-value information can be prioritised for both visual and auditory working memory. The present study examines whether valuable items can similarly be prioritised for the tactile domain. Employing an immediate serial recall procedure (ISR), participants reconstructed a 6-item tactile sequence by moving their fingers in the order of original stimulation. Participants were informed either that one serial position was worth notionally more points (prioritisation condition) or that all items were of equal value (control condition). For Experiment 1 (N = 48), significant boosts in correct recall were evident when serial positions 4 or 5 were more valuable (i.e., prioritisation effects). Experiment 2 (N = 24) demonstrated that the prioritisation effect persisted with concurrent articulation, suggesting that task performance was not a function of verbal recoding and rehearsal of the tactile information. Importantly, a significant recall cost for low-value (non-prioritised) items within the sequence was evident for both experiments. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (1) prioritisation effects transfer to the tactile domain and (2) finite attentional resources can be deliberately and strategically redistributed to specific items within a sequence, dependent upon the prevailing task demands.

Normative data beyond the total scores: a process score analysis of the Rey's 15 word test in healthy aging and Alzheimer's Disease.

The Rey's 15 words test is currently the most frequently used task in Italy to detect memory deficits in AD. The current standardised version is however quite outdated and lacks some cognitive indexes which may highlight problems in recall or encoding processes. The aim of the study was to update the normative data of the test and to consider some variables which were not accounted for in the original study, that is, recognition, learning rate and forgetfulness. We also adopted the process scores approach to ascertain the effects of serial position (primacy and recency). Three hundred ninety-six healthy participants were recruited. To detect any variables useful for intercepting the early stages of dementia, a group of 208 patients in the very early stage of AD was also recruited. Linear models were used to calculate the corrections scores for age, education, and gender, and ROCs were used to calculate cut-offs based on the maximum sum of sensitivity and specificity and the positive and negative predictive values. All main indexes showed excellent Area Under the Curve (0.90-1), strong sensitivity and PPVs for distinguishing between the HCs and AD participants. However, the Intrusions index performed poorly in all parameters. The study provides updated, normative data which may be reliably used as a cognitive marker to detect early AD. The strength of the study is the large sample size and the number of indexes which make it possible to explore the utility of memory test process scores.

Short- and long-term influences of repeated speech examples on segmentation in an unfamiliar language analog.

Because segments in fluent speech (e.g., words and phrases) are not reliably separated by pauses, a key task when listening to an unfamiliar language is to parse the incoming speech into segments to be learned. We aim to understand how working memory contributes to that segmentation learning. One cue to segmentation occurs when a segment is repeated in varying contexts. Cowan (Acta Psychologica, 77(2), 121-135, 1991) explored a language analog to study how segmentation occurs during immediate memory of speech, and found effects of segment presentation frequency, stimulus length, and serial position. Here we ask whether those effects extend from working memory to long-term memory. Overlapping segments were presented (e.g., mah bar slo mi and slo mi geh), varying numbers of times (presentation frequencies) to determine how varying the schedule of repetition patterns would affect perception of a unified test pattern formed from the two of them (e.g., mah bar slo mi geh). These constructions provide an analogy to how segments occur in varying contexts in speech. Participants were to indicate where they heard the boundaries between syllables. In immediate memory, the perceived boundaries more often reflected the most frequently presented pattern, and often reflected both pattern boundaries (in this example, mah bar / slo mi / geh). In a long-term memory follow-up, however, the original presentation frequencies only mattered for certain short test pattern configurations. We suggest that working memory for speech, without a semantic component, may be an incomplete basis to learn longer segments in an unfamiliar language.

Give me enough time to rehearse: presentation rate modulates the production effect.

This paper uses the production effect to test one of the important predictions of a view of memory that is embodied in the Revised Feature Model (RFM). When to-be-recalled lists contain items both read aloud and silently, words read aloud are less well recalled at the beginning of the list and better recalled at the end. According to the RFM, producing the items by reading them aloud adds distinctive features which supports recall, but production also interferes with rehearsal - a process that operates more significantly at the start of a list. This critical role assigned to rehearsal has never been systematically tested. We do this here through a systematic literature review and an experiment that manipulates presentation rate. With a faster presentation rate, rehearsal is less likely; the implication is that the advantage observed for silently read items in the primacy positions should vanish, while the recency advantage for produced items should remain. The systematic review collected an initial sample of 422 unique articles on the production effect in immediate serial recall and revealed the predicted pattern. In addition, in our experiment, the presentation rate was manipulated within an immediate serial recall task (500, 1,000, and 2,000 ms/word). As predicted, the recency advantage for produced items was observed for all presentation speeds. Critically, the production disadvantage for early serial positions was only present for the two slowest rates, but not at the fastest speed. Results were successfully modeled by calling upon the RFM.

Delayed primacy recall performance predicts post mortem Alzheimer's disease pathology from unimpaired ante mortem cognitive baseline.

We propose a novel method to analyse serial position in the CERAD memory test.We analyse data from 1096 individuals who were cognitively unimpaired at baseline.Delayed primacy predicts post mortem pathology better than traditional metrics.

Entropy-based explanations of serial position and learning effects in ordinal responses to word list tests

Measuring a person’s cognitive abilities, such as memory and learning, is central in many medical conditions to reliably diagnose, treat and monitor disease progression. Common tests typically include tasks of recalling sequences of blocks, digits or words. Recalling a word list is affected by so-called serial position effects (SPE), meaning that words at the beginning or end of the list are more likely to be recalled. In our earlier work, as part of including ordinal and nominal properties in metrology, compensation for ordinality in the raw test scores has been performed with psychometric Rasch measurement theory. Thereafter, SPE have been successfully explained with construct specification equations (CSE) dominated by information theoretical entropy as candidate reference measurement procedures. Here, we present how previous German results for explaining memory difficulty in the immediate recalling (IR, trial 1) task of the Rey’s Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) can be replicated with a Swedish cohort (the Gothenburg Mild Cognitive Impairment study, n = 251). This CSE replicability for RAVLT demonstrates comparability across the two cohorts in a kind of inter-laboratory study. Moreover, RAVLT includes repeated trials and learning through practice is expected. How memory task difficulty changes over the eight trials in RAVLT is studied: SPE are not so prominent for the delayed recalling sequences and there is an overall reduction in the task difficulty CSE intercept with trial number, interpreted as an effect of learning. To conclude, the methodology and evidence provided here can be clinically used not only to measure a person’s memory ability but also his or her learning ability, as well as understanding the relationship between learning ability and other cognitive domains.

Cross-frequency and inter-regional phase synchronization in explicit transitive inference.

Explicit logical reasoning, like transitive inference, is a hallmark of human intelligence. This study investigated cortical oscillations and their interactions in transitive inference with EEG. Participants viewed premises describing abstract relations among items. They accurately recalled the relationship between old pairs of items, effectively inferred the relationship between new pairs of items, and discriminated between true and false relationships for new pairs. First, theta (4-7Hz) and alpha oscillations (8-15Hz) had distinct functional roles. Frontal theta oscillations distinguished between new and old pairs, reflecting the inference of new information. Parietal alpha oscillations changed with serial position and symbolic distance of the pairs, representing the underlying relational structure. Frontal alpha oscillations distinguished between true and false pairs, linking the new information with the underlying relational structure. Second, theta and alpha oscillations interacted through cross-frequency and inter-regional phase synchronization. Frontal theta-alpha 1:2 phase locking appeared to coordinate spectrally diverse neural activity, enhanced for new versus old pairs and true versus false pairs. Alpha-band frontal-parietal phase coherence appeared to coordinate anatomically distributed neural activity, enhanced for new versus old pairs and false versus true pairs. It suggests that cross-frequency and inter-regional phase synchronization among theta and alpha oscillations supports human transitive inference.