Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Much research has focused on phonological representation in verbal short-term memory (STM), with less attention paidto semantic representations despite evidence of linguistic long-term memory (LTM) effects. We investigate when phono-logical and semantic representations are activated in verbal STM: does it occur during retrieval (redintegration account)or there is direct access to language knowledge stored in LTM (language-based account). A probe recognition paradigmwas used to test phonological and semantic encoding in verbal STM. Participants studied a list of words and then judgedwhether a probe word presented after the list rhymed or was synonymous to any item in the word list. Probe recognitionwas better was semantically processed words than the phonological task, suggesting that semantic encoding was evidentat first exposure during encoding rather than a redintegration effect. It appears that semantic knowledge, in addition to andseparate from phonological knowledge, is actively maintained in verbal STM.