Effects of retrieval practice and presentation modality on verbal learning: testing the limits of the testing effect

ABSTRACT

The testing effect refers to improved memory after retrieval practice and has been researched primarily with visual stimuli. In two experiments, we investigated whether the testing effect can be replicated when the to-be-learned information is presented auditorily, or visually?+?auditorily. Participants learned Swahili-English word pairs in one of three presentation modalities – visual, auditory, or visual?+?auditory. This was manipulated between-participants in Experiment 1 and within-participants in Experiment2. All participants studied the word pairs during three study trials. Half of participants practiced recalling the English translations in response to the Swahili cue word twice before the final test whereas the other half simply studied the word pairs twice more. Results indicated an improvement in final test performance in the repeated test condition, but only in the visual presentation modality (Experiments 1 and 2) and in the visual?+?auditory presentation modality (Experiment 2). This suggests that the benefits of practiced retrieval may be limited to information presented in a visual modality.     

The role of crossmodal competition and dimensional overlap in crossmodal attention switching

Crossmodal selective attention was investigated in a cued task switching paradigm using bimodal visual and auditory stimulation. A cue indicated the imperative modality. Three levels of spatial S–R associations were established following perceptual (location), structural (numerical), and conceptual (verbal) set-level compatibility. In Experiment 1, participants switched attention between the auditory and visual modality either with a spatial-location or spatial-numerical stimulus set. In the spatial-location set, participants performed a localization judgment on left vs. right presented stimuli, whereas the spatial-numerical set required a magnitude judgment about a visually or auditorily presented number word. Single-modality blocks with unimodal stimuli were included as a control condition. In Experiment 2, the spatial-numerical stimulus set was replaced by a spatial-verbal stimulus set using direction words (e.g., “left”). RT data showed modality switch costs, which were asymmetric across modalities in the spatial-numerical and spatial-verbal stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli), and congruency effects, which were asymmetric primarily in the spatial-location stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli). This pattern of effects suggests task-dependent visual dominance.     

Processing of words presented simultaneously to eye and ear

The simultaneous processing of auditorily and visually presented messages was examined in three experiments. Subjects searched lists of words for a target word while processing auditorily presented information. Across conditions, subjects searched for (a) target words in a list of words presented auditorily, (b) the same target words in lists presented visually, (c) a member of a taxonomic category in a visually presented list, and (d) a rhyme in a list of words presented visually. The level of processing of a simultaneous auditory message varied across experiments. In experiment 1, subjects shadowed lists of digits. In Experiment 2, subjects reported the antonym of each word in a list. In Experiment 3, subjects named the taxonomic category of each word in a list. In all three experiments, subject had high detection rates for target words presented visually and for category targets but low detection rates for target words presented auditorily and for rhyme targets. These results suggest that processing the semantic properties, but not the acoustic properties, of words presented to the visual modality is independent of simultaneous processing in the auditory modality. Implication for models of selective attention are discussed.     

Effects of visual and auditory short-term memory tasks on the spatiotemporal dynamics and variability of postural sway

The authors measured postural sway while participants (N = 20 in each experiment) stood on a rigid or a compliant surface, with their eyes open or closed, and while they did or did not perform a short-term memory (STM) task. In Experiment 1, the STM stimuli were presented visually; in Experiment 2, the stimuli were presented auditorily. In both experiments, fine-scaled, mediolateral postural-sway variability decreased as the cognitive load imposed by the STM task increased. That effect was independent of support surface and vision manipulations. The spatiotemporal profile of postural sway was affected by both visual and auditory STM tasks, but to a greater degree by the auditory task. The authors discuss implications of the results for theories and models of postural control.     

Presentation modality,rehearsal-prevention conditions,and auditory confusions in tests of short-term memory

Ss were presented four-letter sequences either auditorily or visually and asked for ordered recall after 0, 2.1, 4.2, 8.4, or 12.6 sec of digit categorization. Three different rehearsal-prevention conditions were required during presentation of the memory set: categorizing, suppressing (saying "dah"), or pronouncing each letter. Recall was worst after categorizing, best after pronouncing. Auditory presentation led to better recall after no delay but more rapid forgetting than visual presentation, regardless of the rehearsal-prevention condition. These results, and analyses of auditory confusions, are inconsistent with a view of memory which asserts that sensory information is encoded auditorily regardless of presentation modality or vocalization behavior during presentation.     

Effects of same-modality interference on immediate serial recall of auditory and visual information.

Two studies investigated the effects of same-modality interference on the immediate serial recall of auditorily and visually presented stimuli. Typically, research in which this task is used has been conducted in quiet rooms, excluding auditory information that is extraneous to the auditorily presented stimuli. However, visual information such as background items clearly within the subject's view have not been excluded during visual presentation. Therefore, in both the present studies, the authors used procedures that eliminated extra-list visual interference and introduced extra-list auditory interference. When same-modality interference was eliminated, weak visual recency effects were found, but they were smaller than those that were generated by auditorily presented items. Further, mid-list and end-of-list recall of visually presented stimuli was unaffected by the amount of interfering visual information. On the other hand, the introduction of auditory interference increased mid-list recall of auditory stimuli. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the mid-list effect occurred with a moderate, but not with a minimal or maximal, level of auditory interference, indicating that moderate amounts of auditory interference had an alerting effect that is not present in typical visual interference.     

Suppression effects on musical and verbal memory

Three experiments contrasted the effects of articulatory suppression on recognition memory for musical and verbal sequences. In Experiment 1, a standard/comparison task was employed, with digit or note sequences presented visually or auditorily while participants remained silent or produced intermittent verbal suppression (saying "the") or musical suppression (singing "la"). Both suppression types decreased performance by equivalent amounts, as compared with no suppression. Recognition accuracy was lower during suppression for visually presented digits than during that for auditorily presented digits (consistent with phonological loop predictions), whereas accuracy was equivalent for visually presented notes and auditory tones. When visual interference filled the retention interval in Experiment 2, performance with visually presented notes but not digits was impaired. Experiment 3 forced participants to translate visually presented music sequences by presenting comparison sequences auditorily. Suppression effects for visually presented music resembled those for digits only when the recognition task required sensory translation of cues.     

Modality effects in retrieval of information from short-term memory

Retrieval from short-term memory was studied in a reaction time task, Ss decided whether or not a target item was present in a memorized list. When modality of presentation was manipulated, fastest reaction times resulted if the target item and all memory items were presented auditorily. All conditions involving pure visual presentation or mixed auditory-visual presentation resulted in reaction times which were longer than those for the pure auditory conditions out which did not differ from each other. This suggests that retrieval can be trom either a precategorical auditory memory or a postcategorical memory which does not preserve the sensory features of the memorized material.     

Short-term memory and the nature of interference from concurrent shadowing

Trigrams were presented visually or auditorily and followed by a 12 s retention interval filled with shadowing numbers or letters. Auditory memory letters followed by letter shadowing were recalled less than auditory memory letters followed by number shadowing or visual memory letters followed by either type of shadowing. The latter three conditions did not differ among themselves. An analysis of the recall intrusions suggested that forgetting of auditory memory letters followed by letter shadowing was caused mainly by a confusion between covert rehearsals and shadowing activity, while forgetting in the other three conditions was caused primarily by proactive interference from earlier memory trials.     

Derived relational responding as generalized operant behavior

The major aim of the present study was to demonstrate that derived relational responding may be viewed as a form of generalized operant behavior. In Experiment 1, 4 subjects were divided into two conditions (2 in each condition). Using a two-comparison matching-to-sample procedure, all subjects were trained and tested for the formation of two combinatorially entailed relations. Subjects were trained and tested across multiple stimulus sets. Each set was composed of novel stimuli. Both Conditions 1 and 2 involved explicit performance-contingent feedback presented at the end of each block of test trials (i.e., delayed feedback). In Condition 1, feedback was accurate (consistent with the experimenter-designated relations) following exposure to the initial stimulus sets. When subjects' responding reached a predefined mastery criterion, the feedback then switched to inaccurate (not consistent with the experimenter-designated relations) until responding once again reached a predefined criterion. Condition 2 was similar to Condition 1, except that exposure to the initial stimulus sets was followed by inaccurate feedback and once the criterion was reached feedback switched to accurate. Once relational responding emerged and stabilized, response patterns on novel stimulus sets were controlled by the feedback delivered for previous stimulus sets. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, except that during Conditions 3 and 4 four comparison stimuli were employed during training and testing. Experiment 3 was similar to Condition 1 of Experiment 1, except that after the mastery criterion was reached for class-consistent responding, feedback alternated from accurate to inaccurate across each successive stimulus set. Experiment 4 involved two types of feedback, one type following tests for mutual entailment and the other type following tests for combinatorial entailment. Results from this experiment demonstrated that mutual and combinatorial entailment may be controlled independently by accurate and inaccurate feedback. Overall, the data support the suggestion, made by relational frame theory, that derived relational responding is a form of generalized operant behavior.     

The influence of retrieval on retention

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that successful retrieval of an item from memory affects retention only because the retrieval provides an additional presentation of the target item. Two methods of learning paired associates were compared. In the pure study trial (pure ST condition) method, both items of a pair were presented simultaneously for study. In the test trial/study trial (TTST condition) method, subjects attempted to retrieve the response term during a period in which only the stimulus term was present (and the response term of the pair was presented after a 5-sec delay). Final retention of target items was tested with cued-recall tests. In Experiment 1, there was a reliable advantage in final testing for nonsense-syllable/number pairs in the TTST condition over pairs in the pure ST condition. In Experiment 2, the same result was obtained with Eskimo/English word pairs. This benefit of the TTST condition was not apparently different for final retrieval after 5 min or after 24 h. Experiments 3 and 4 ruled out two artifactual explanations of the TTST advantage observed in the first two experiments. Because performing a memory retrieval (TTST condition) led to better performance than pure study (pure ST condition), the results reject the hypothesis that a successful retrieval is beneficial only to the extent that it provides another study experience.     

Semantic facilitation across sensory modalities in the processing of individual words and sentences

The effect of semantic priming upon lexical decisions made for words in isolation (Experiment 1) and during sentence comprehension (Experiment 2) was investigated using a cross-modal lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, subjects made lexical decisions to both auditory and visual stimuli. Processing auditorily presented words facilitated subsequent lexical decisions on semantically related visual words. In Experiment 2, subjects comprehended auditorily presented sentences while simultaneously making lexical decisions for visually presented stimuli. Lexical decisions were facilitated when a visual word appeared immediately following a related word in the sentential material. Lexical decisions were also facilitated when the visual word appeared three syllables following closure of the clause containing the related material. Arguments are made for autonomy of semantic priming during sentence comprehension.     

Interaction between mode of learning and subjective experience: Translation effects in long-term memory

It has been suggested that writing auditorily presented words at encoding involves distinctive translation processes between visual and auditory domains, leading to the formation of distinctive memory traces at retrieval. This translation effect leads to higher levels of recognition than the writing of visually presented words, a non-translation effect. The present research investigated whether writing and the other translation effect of vocalisation (vocalising visually presented words) would be present in tests of recall, recognition memory and whether these effects are based on the subjective experience of remembering or knowing. Experiment 1 found a translation effect in the auditory domain in recall, as the translation effect of writing yielded higher recall than both non-translation effects of vocalisation and silently hearing. Experiment 2 found a translation effect in the visual domain in recognition, as the translation effect of vocalisation yielded higher recognition than both non-translation effects of writing and silently reading. This translation effect was attributable to the subjective experience of remembering rather than knowing. The present research therefore demonstrates the beneficial effect of translation in both recall and recognition, with the effect of vocalisation in recognition being based on rich episodic remembering.     

Stimulus-specific processing consequences of pattern goodness

Two issues concerning the effects of visual pattern goodness on information processing time were investigated: the role of memory vs. encoding and the role of individual stimulus goodness vs. stimulus similarity. A sequential “same-different” task was used to provide differentiation of target item or memory effects from display item or encoding effects. Experiment 1 used four alternative stimuli in each block of trials. The results showed that good patterns were processed faster than poor patterns for both “same” and “different” responses. Furthermore, the goodness of the target item had a greater effect on reaction time than did the goodness of the display item, indicating that memory is more important than encoding in producing faster processing of good stimuli. Effects of interstimulus similarity on processing time were minimal, although isolation of good stimuli in a similarity space could explain many of the results. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1, despite the fact that differences in similarity space had been minimized by using only two alternative stimuli in each block. In addition, the speed of processing a “same” pair was essentially independent of the particular alternative stimulus in a block. These results suggest that in this task, there is a processing advantage for good stimuli that is stimulus specific, with the effect operating primarily in memory.     

Seeing or hearing? Perceptual independence,modality confusions,and crossmodal congruity effects with focused and divided attention

Observers were given brief presentations of pairs of simultaneous stimuli consisting of a visual and a spoken letter. In the visual focused-attention conditon, only the visual letter should be reported; in the auditory focused-attention condition, only the spoken letter should be reported; in the divided-attention condition, both letters, as well as their respective modalities, should be reported (forced choice). The proportions of correct reports were nearly the same in the three conditions (no significant divided-attention decrement), and in the divided-attention condition, the probability that the visual letter was correctly reported was independent of whether the auditory letter was correctly reported. However, with a probability much higher than chance, the observers reported hearing the visual stimulus letter or seeing the spoken stimulus letter (modality confusions). The strength of the effect was nearly the same with focused as with divided attention. We also discovered a crossmodal congruity effect: Performance was better when the two letters in a stimulus pair were the same than when they differed in type.     

Lexical influences in audiovisual speech perception

Phoneme identification with audiovisually discrepant stimuli is influenced hy information in the visual signal (the McGurk effect). Additionally, lexical status affects identification of auditorily presented phonemes. The present study tested for lexical influences on the McGurk effect. Participants identified phonemes in audiovisually discrepant stimuli in which lexical status of the auditory component and of a visually influenced percept was independently varied. Visually influenced (McGurk) responses were more frequent when they formed a word and when the auditory signal was a nonword (Experiment 1). Lexical effects were larger for slow than for fast responses (Experiment 2), as with auditory speech, and were replicated with stimuli matched on physical properties (Experiment 3). These results are consistent with models in which lexical processing of speech is modality independent.     

Working memory, perceptual priming, and the perception of hierarchical forms: Opposite effects of priming and working memory without memory refreshing

Previous research has shown that stimuli held in working memory (WM) can influence spatial attention. Using Navon stimuli, we explored whether and how items in WM affect the perception of visual targets at local and global levels in compound letters. Participants looked for a target letter presented at a local or global level while holding a regular block letter as a memory item. An effect of holding the target’s identity in WM was found. When memory items and targets were the same, performance was better than in a neutral condition when the memory item did not appear in the hierarchical letter (a benefit from valid cuing). When the memory item matched the distractor in the hierarchical stimulus, performance was worse than in the neutral baseline (a cost on invalid trials). These effects were greatest when the WM cue matched the global level of the hierarchical stimulus, suggesting that WM biases attention to the global level of form. Interestingly, in a no-memory priming condition, target perception was faster in the invalid condition than in the neutral baseline, reversing the effect in the WM condition. A further control experiment ruled out the effects of WM being due to participants’ refreshing their memory from the hierarchical stimulus display. The data show that information in WM biases the selection of hierarchical forms, whereas priming does not. Priming alters the perceptual processing of repeated stimuli without biasing attention.     

Coordination of executive functions in monolingual and bilingual children

Two groups of 8-year-old children who were monolingual or bilingual completed a complex classification task in which they made semantic judgments on stimuli that were presented either visually or auditorily. The task requires coordinating a variety of executive control components, specifically working memory, inhibition, and shifting. When each of the visual and auditory tasks was presented alone, performance was comparable for children in the two groups. Combining the two modalities into a dual-task paradigm made the task more difficult, and on this combined task bilingual children maintained better accuracy than monolingual children, especially on the visual task. The results are interpreted in terms of the enhanced ability of bilingual children to coordinate the executive control components required in performing this complex task.     

Modality, concreteness, and set-size effects in a free reconstruction of order task

Would informing subjects which items were presented on the current list remove effects of presentation modality, concreteness, and set size in a long-term free reconstruction of order task? In Experiment 1, a typical modality effect was found: memory for the final item in a list was enhanced when the item was presented auditorily rather than visually. In Experiment 2, order memory was better for concrete than for abstract items. And in Experiment 3, order memory was better when the same six items were presented on every trial than when a unique set of six items was presented. In all conditions in all experiments, the to-be-remembered items were given to the subject at test. These results suggest that contrary to a popular assumption, the reconstruction of order task does not provide a functionally pure measure of order memory     

Behavioral and dimensional contrast in rats.

Rats pressed a nose key for brain stimulation reinforcement presented on a fixed-interval schedule. Stimuli were drawn at random from a continuum of 12 white noise intensities in the range 62-95 decibels, spaced in 3 decibel steps. Experiment 1 varied the number of stimuli and the reinforcement contingencies associated with them. In Condition I (baseline) all stimuli signaled reinforcement; in Conditions II and III stimuli from one half of the continuum signaled reinforcement and those from the other half, extinction. However, in Condition II the 6 stimuli from the middle of the continuum were omitted. Experiment 2 held constant the number of stimuli and varied their spacing. In Condition I, each of 6 sounds signaled reinforcement. In Conditions II and II, three stimuli from one half of the continuum signaled reinforcement and three from the other half, extinction. However, in Condition II the stimuli were near the extremes of the continuum (Stimuli 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 12). Condition III replaced Stimulus 3 with Stimulus 6 and Stimulus 10 with Stimulus 7. Behavioral contrast was seen in an increase over baseline in response rate to the stimuli associated with the constant schedule component when the variable component was changed to extinction. Dimensional contrast was seen in a further elevation of rate to intermediate positive stimulus values when stimuli were added to the border region between positive and negative values.