What is the word length effect?

• A. Shorter words are recalled better than longer ones because the loop has a time-based decay limit.
• B. Longer words are recalled better due to deeper processing.
• C. Word length has no effect on recall.
• D. Recall is influenced by semantic similarity.

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is the phonological loop in the working memory model and how it handles rehearsal over a brief decay window. In tasks that require immediate recall, items must be refreshed in the phonological store via subvocal rehearsal. Shorter words take less time to articulate and rehearse, so more of them can be refreshed before their traces decay. Longer words take longer to rehearse, leaving fewer items within the decay window, which leads to poorer recall for longer words. This demonstrates that recall is constrained by the time available to rehearse items in the phonological loop, not by how deeply something is processed or by semantic similarity.

Longer words recalled better because of deeper processing isn’t the right explanation here, since this effect is about the time available for articulatory rehearsal, not processing depth. Saying word length has no effect contradicts the observed phonological store decay dynamic. And recall influenced by semantic similarity points to a different aspect of memory (semantic encoding or long-term memory), not the immediate phonological rehearsal that produces the word length effect.