PREFIX AND SUFFIX EFFECTS - DO THEY HAVE A COMMON BASIS

In a series of four experiments, subjects are required to recall sequences of digits followed by either a suffix spoken by the experimenter, or a prefix spoken by the subject himself. The prefixes and suffixes comprised words ranging from one to five syllables in length. Two separate effects were observed; in the case of both prefixes and suffixes, an increase in length produced a decrement in performance on items in the middle of the sequence. In the case of the suffix, there was an additional effect on the last digit presented; in this case however, long suffixes produced less disruption than short. This double dissociation indicates that the suffix effect has two components, one confined to the last item and the other influencing the rest of the sequence. This latter component also appears to be responsible for response prefix effect and is interpretable in terms of a simple decay hypothesis. © 1979 Academic Press, Inc.