Item-dependent cues in serial order are tracked by the magnitude (not the presence) of the fill-in tendency.

ABSTRACT: In tasks that measure serial-order memory, it is common to observe a "fill-in tendency"-when a person skips an item, the next item they report is more likely to be the skipped item (a fill-in response) than the next list item (an infill response). They tend to "fill in" the blank they skipped. The fill-in tendency has informed the modeling of serial-order memory-it presents strong evidence against associative chaining accounts because they predict more infill responses than fill-in responses. Despite the failures of associative chaining theories, evidence grows for the use of chaining-like item-dependent cues in serial-order memory. In this paper, we analyzed fill-in and infill responses from nine serial learning experiments (one new experiment and eight previously published experiments) t

SUBMITTER: Lindsey DRB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12426145 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature