title: Phonological similarity in working memory span tasks.
abstract: In a series of four experiments, we explored what conditions are sufficient to produce a phonological similarity facilitation effect in working memory span tasks. By using the same set of memoranda, but differing the secondary-task requirements across experiments, we showed that a phonological similarity facilitation effect is dependent upon the semantic relationship between the memoranda and the secondary-task stimuli, and is robust to changes in the representation, ordering, and pool size of the secondary-task stimuli. These findings are consistent with interference accounts of memory (Brown, Neath, & Chater, Psychological Review, 114, 539-576, 2007; Oberauer, Lewandowsky, Farrell, Jarrold, & Greaves, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19, 779-819, 2012), whereby rhyming stimuli provide a form of categorical similarity that allows distractors to be excluded from retrieval at recall.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA. machow@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chow
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Brooke N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Macnamara
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew R A
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Conway
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Interference/inhibition; Memory retrieval; Short-term memory; Working memory