Speech and language processing mechanisms in verbal serial recall

We report two experiments examining the role of concreteness and word phonological neighborhood characteristics on immediate serial recall. In line with previous findings concreteness, word frequency, and larger neighborhood size are associated with better serial recall. Both concreteness and word neighborhood size were also positively associated with a measure of access to a speech production code from semantics (the speed and accuracy of providing a spoken word from its spoken definition). In contrast, concreteness had no effects on speech perception measures, and words from large neighborhoods were actually identified in speech with more difficulty than words from small neighborhoods. This pattern of results suggests that speech production mechanisms are more closely related to immediate serial recall performance than are speech perception mechanisms.