Manipulations of irrelevant information: suffix effects with articulatory suppression and irrelevant speech.
Numerous studies have demonstrated impaired recall when the to-be-remembered information is accompanied or followed by irrelevant information. However, no current theory of immediate memory explains all three common methods of manipulating irrelevant information: requiring concurrent articulation, presenting irrelevant speech, and adding a stimulus suffix. Five experiments combined these manipulations to determine how they interact and which theoretical framework most accurately and completely accounts for the data. In Experiments 1 and 2, a list of auditory items was followed by an irrelevant speech sound (the suffix) while subjects engaged in articulatory suppression. Although articulatory suppression reduced overall recall compared to a control condition, comparable suffix effects were seen in both conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 found reliable suffix effects when list presentation was accompanied by irrelevant speech. Experiment 5 found a suffix effect even when the irrelevant speech was composed of a set of different items. Implications for working memory, precategorical acoustic store, the changing-state hypothesis, and the feature model are discussed.
Surprenant
A M
AM
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1364, USA. aimee@psych.purdue.edu
LeCompte
D C
DC
Neath
I
I
D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D013060:Speech