Question

What is the word length effect? include references and in text citations.

Answer 1

Word length effect is basically referred to a specific behaviour, that people exhibit in recalling words. They tend to recall lists of short words much better than the lists of long words (Baddeley et al., 1975)¹. In a Serial Recall experiment, participants are presented with a list of words, which they need to remember. Then they are asked to recall it, taking care that the words are in the same order. The study's results exhibit that the participants recalled more words from lists which had only short words, in contrast to the lists composed of long words. This observation is generally explained by either of the two theories:

1. The increase in complexity because of longer items (Neath and Nairne, 1995)²

2. Longer rehearsal time for longer items (Baddeley, 1986)³. This theory points out that since short words can be rehearsed in shorter rehearsal time, so more short words are recalled.

References:

1. Baddeley A. D., Thomson N., Buchanan M. (1975). Word length and the structure of short-term memory. J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 14, 575–589

2. Neath I., Nairne J. S. (1995). Word-length effects in immediate memory: overwriting trace decay theory. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 2, 429–441

3. Baddeley A. D. (1986). Working Memory. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press