The semantic relatedness effect in serial recall: Deconfounding encoding and recall order

• Semantic knowledge strongly influences working memory performance. relatedness impacts performance during encoding. There is no evidence that semantic contributes to recall. via activated long-term memory. The ability store information in verbal (WM) closely interacts with our linguistic knowledge. For instance, we can hold semantically related words (e.g., “cat, dog, bird”) better WM than unrelated ones “desk, pillow, mouse”). This study investigates boundary conditions of the beneficial effect on immediate for lists. Independently varying encoding and recall order lists words, unraveled several mechanistic explanations effect. We first tested a cueing mechanism, according which an item facilitates other items. next disentangled interactive activation versus feature overlap account relatedness. Whereas former predicts emerges from temporal co-activation items, latter it superposition features bound similar contexts. Our results demonstrate affects at stage processing, rules out as plausible mechanism. Further, are presented was most important determinant effect, agreement account. supports model through occurring