Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between…

In the current set of studies, a new hypothesis regarding the cause of the commonly observed U-shaped serial position effect (SPE) in spelling is introduced and tested. Instead of greater competition during output or weaker positional representation for word-medial letters, commonly accepted explanations for the cause of the SPE, the…

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses…