Tactile Ranschburg effects: facilitation and inhibitory repetition effects analogous to verbal memory.

Abstract

The present paper examines the effect of within-sequence item repetitions in tactile order memory. Employing an immediate serial recall (ISR) procedure, participants reconstructed a 6-item sequence tapped upon their fingers by moving those fingers in the order of original stimulation. In Experiment 1a, within-sequence repetition of an item separated by 2- intervening items resulted in a significant reduction in recall accuracy for that repeated item (i.e. the Ranschburg effect). In Experiment 1b, within-sequence repetition of an adjacent item resulted in significant recall facilitation for that repeated item. These effects mirror those reported for verbal stimuli (e.g. Henson, 1998a). These data are the first to demonstrate the Ranschburg effect with non-verbal stimuli and suggest further cross-modal similarities in order memory.