ABSTRACT
Bellugi and their colleagues discovered that there were several parallels between memory
for words and memory for signs. For example, Bellugi, Klima, and Siple (1974) found evidence
for a primacy effect (initial list items are recalled well) and a recency effect (the last few items on a list are recalled well) for lists of ASL signs. The primacy effect is argued to be due
to the fact that items early in a list get more rehearsal, and finding such an effect for sign
language provided some initial evidence for a rehearsal process for signs. The recency ef-
fect has been argued to be due to “echoic” memory or to a “precategorical acoustic store”
that retains just-heard words prior to active rehearsal (Crowder & Morton, 1969). And yet
Bellugi et al. (1974) had observed a recency effect for lists of ASL signs that could not be
due to acoustic memory. Shand and Klima (1981) went on to present evidence that the recency
effect and the associated suffix effect1 do not arise from an acoustic sensory store, rather
they argued that these effects are related to memory for a primary linguistic code, which
can be either acoustic (speech) or visual (sign). Thus, not only did the early work of Klima
and Bellugi begin to reveal the structure of working memory for sign language, their work
also provided important insight into the nature of working memory for spoken language.
