Examining the semantic relatedness effect on working memory with ad hoc categories.

The semantic relatedness effect, a memory advantage of semantically related items (e.g., "penguin, giraffe, goat"), is well established in the literature on working memory (WM). Nevertheless, it remains unclear what mechanisms are responsible for this effect. Although an influential account ascribes...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 53; no. 6; pp. 1944 - 1963
Autores principales: Ishiguro, Sho, Guitard, Dominic, Saint-Aubin, Jean
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Aug2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        10.3758/s13421-025-01692-2
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        atl: Examining the semantic relatedness effect on working memory with ad hoc categories.
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          Ishiguro, Sho
          Guitard, Dominic
          Saint-Aubin, Jean
        affil:
          https://ror.org/02kpeqv85 Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
          https://ror.org/03kk7td41 School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
          https://ror.org/029tnqt29 École de Psychologie, Université de Moncton, E1A 3E9, Moncton, NB, Canada
      su:
        Memory
        Semantics
        Prompts (Psychology)
        Research funding
        Short-term memory
        Thought & thinking
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        subj:
          Memory
          Semantics
          Prompts (Psychology)
          Research funding
          Short-term memory
          Thought & thinking
      keyword:
        Ad hoc categories
        Semantic maintenance
        Semantic relatedness
        Working memory
        Ad hoc categories
        Semantic maintenance
        Semantic relatedness
        Working memory
      ab: The semantic relatedness effect, a memory advantage of semantically related items (e.g., "penguin, giraffe, goat"), is well established in the literature on working memory (WM). Nevertheless, it remains unclear what mechanisms are responsible for this effect. Although an influential account ascribes it to the cue-dependent retrieval process (e.g., "animal" works as a cue for "penguin, giraffe, goat"), this account has not yet been fully investigated. This is partly because the influence of cues cannot be directly tested in typical studies using common categories (e.g., "animal" is likely to be generated and used by participants, but the generation and use of cues are uncontrollable for the experimenter). The present study, by introducing ad hoc categories and cueing ad hoc category labels, directly tested the influence of cues. Specifically, seemingly unrelated items (e.g., "bone, fly, car") were presented with or without the corresponding ad hoc category label (e.g., "things that dogs chase"). Four experiments demonstrated that providing ad hoc category labels affected WM performance. Importantly, providing the labels improved item memory in WM (Experiments 2 and 3). This supported the retrieval-cue account. Nevertheless, the effect was small (Experiments 2 and 3) and was not found in an experiment (Experiment 1). In contrast, providing the labels had a substantial and systematic effect on long-term memory, suggesting that the manipulation of providing the labels, per se, was successful. The current study's implications for research on WM and ad hoc categories were also discussed.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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