Examining the semantic relatedness effect on working memory with ad hoc categories

The semantic relatedness effect, a memory advantage of semantically related items (e.g., “penguin, giraffe, goat”), is well established in the literature on working memory (WM). Nevertheless, it remains unclear what mechanisms are responsible for this effect. Although an influential account ascribes it to the cue-dependent retrieval process (e.g., “animal” works as a cue for “penguin, giraffe, goat”), this account has not yet been fully …