title: Retroactive effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall from short-term memory.
abstract: The authors report 5 serial-recall experiments. In 4 of the 5 experiments, they show that irrelevant sound (IS) has a retroactive effect on material already in memory. In Experiment 1, IS presented during a filled retention interval had a reliable effect on list recall. Four further experiments, 3 of which used retroactive IS, showed that IS continued to-have an effect on recall following a long, filled retention interval. Articulatory suppression during visual input was found to abolish the long-lasting, retroactive effect of IS, supporting the idea that IS affects the phonological-loop component of short-term memory. IS also, therefore, seems to affect a longer term memory system with which the loop interacts.
authors.affiliation: Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom. dennis.norris@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Norris
authors.forename: Alan D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Baddeley
authors.forename: Michael P A
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Page
mesh_terms: D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D010700:Phonetics; D013016:Sound; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception