Short-Term Recall of High-Frequency Words of English in Evening High School Students and University Students
Serial Order Effects, Word Properties, and Error Analysis
2016 Volume 46 Pages 1-10
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2016 Volume 46 Pages 1-10
This study is an extension of Williams et al. (2015) on short-term memory of high-frequency English words involving evening high school students and university students, further analyzing the same dataset from three new perspectives: serial order position, word properties, and error analysis. The key findings were (1) that the two groups above greatly differed in recall rates but not in the serial order effect pattern, (2) whereas the effect of word familiarity on recall was significant only for the high school group, the effect of the high school group's knowledge of the test words assessed by a word test was significant for both groups, and (3) that the groups appeared to differ more in specific item recall than order error rates. Some deeper educational implications than Williams et al. and some issues for further research are discussed.
