Individual differences in cognition: Relationship between verbal ability and memory for order

The crucial role of order information in language has led to the suggestion that psychometrically measured verbal ability may be related to memory for order. The literature pertaining to this hypothesis is briefly reviewed and various methodological difficulties discussed. The results of three experiments indicated that (a) order and item information may be retained separately; (b) verbal ability is related to the short-term recall of order; (c) verbal ability is unrelated to memory for order when testing involves recognition rather than recall; and (d) the relationship between verbal ability and memory for order is most pronounced when the originally presented order must be transformed at output (as in the "digits backward" task). An output process in which material is decoded and held in an output buffer until decoding is complete is viewed as the most likely locus of the verbal ability-memory for order relationship.