Source variability and recall of auditory material

Recall of auditory narrative material was measured under three conditions of presentation. These were a single source condition with material from one speaker, a four source fired sequence condition with material from four speakers in a fired sequence of 3-sec. lengths, and a four source random condition with material from four speakers in a random sequence of 3-sec. lengths. Recall was better for the single source condition than for the four source conditions. No significant difference was found between the fixed and random sequential presentations. Results are discussed in terms of the attentional behaviors involved in the tasks.     

Developmental trends in recall of central and incidental auditory material

An auditory recall task, involving central and incidental stimuli and designed to correspond to that used in visual selective attention studies, was developed and presented to second-, fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders. There were significant differences in favor of older compared to younger Ss and girls compared to boys. In addition, Ss performed better when animals were the relevant and foods the irrelevant stimuli than vice versa. The nature of the developmental increase in auditory recall of central vs incidental stimuli demonstrated in this task was discussed in terms of developmental trends found in the visual modality. The sex differences and differences found for the animals vs foods condition were discussed with regard to differential short-term memory strategies.     

Encoding variability and organization in free recall

Measures of category clustering and subjective organization are well-established predictors of performance in free recall tasks. The present studies demonstrate that a measure of encoding variability affords equally powerful and independent prediction of free recall performance. They also illustrate an interaction between encoding processes and organizational activity. In Experiments 1 and 2, the independent contributions of organization and encoding variability are demonstrated in categorizable and uncategorizable lists and in subjects whose recall is expected to increase (adults) or decrease (children) as a function of more varied encodings across trials. In Experiment 3, a category labeling procedure is used to demonstrate that the negative relationship between encoding variability and recall can be reversed by inducing adult-like organizational activity in children.     

A developmental study of relations between free recall, cued recall, and recall of incidental material

Six-, 9-, 17–19-, 45–55-, and 65-year-old subjects were shown 16 slides depicting one colored object and two uncolored context objects in a common setting, the task being to learn the names of the colored objects. Free and cued recall of both colored and context items were tested, the context objects being used as retrieval cues for the colored ones, and vice versa. The relative superiority of cued recall to free recall decreased regularly with increasing age. In the oldest subjects the level of free recall of TBR-objects was still fairly high, the level of recall of context objects being very low. The results support the hypothesis that adults encode nominally irrelevant context materials to a decreasing extent with increasing age, and that memory traces of young people in this sense are "richer", i.e., contain a greater number/variety of potential retrieval cues, than those of the elderly.     

The relationship between auditory recall and dysfluency in young stutterers

This study examined the relationship between auditory recall and dysfluent behavior in children. Subjects were 11 stutterers and 11 nonstutterers, ages 4.9–11.10. The Auditory Sequential Memory subtest of the ITPA and the Auditory Attention Span for Related Syllables subtest of the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitudes were administered to both groups. Results indicated that scores on the ITPA were not significantly different. Comparison of the group's scores on the DTLA were highly significant with the control group's scoring 35 months higher. After 6 months of therapy, six children in the experimental group were fluent. Posttests revealed no significant differences on the ITPA. On the DTLA, the experimental group's mean scores significantly increased by 13.9 months. The gain in auditory recall of meaningful material substantiated the hypothesized relationship between auditory recall and dysfluency. This relationship was not viewed as causative of stuttering; data were interpreted as evidence that increased fluency allows children to use previously suppressed linguistic data.     

Phonological similarity and enhanced auditory recency in longer-term free recall

The effect of phonological similarity amongst list items on the modality effect was investigated in free recall with distraction activity interpolated before and after each list word. In Experiment 1 the distractor activity involved counting backward silently mouthing each number, and the modality effect was drastically attenuated by high similarity. This outcome is comparable with that found in immediate recall, and it is consistent with an echoic memory interpretation. In Experiment 2 the same backward-counting task was performed with each number being vocalized, and the modality effect was unaffected by phonological similarity. This outcome leads to the stronger conclusion that, under those conditions at least, the modality effect cannot be echoic. Implications of these findings for general theoretical accounts of the modality effect are discussed.     

Preferred recall order and recall accuracy for two messages presented simultaneously over a single auditory channel

Ss in the dichotic listening task prefer, and are more accurate with, the channel-by-channel order of recall-recalling all information presented to one ear followed by the information presented to the other ear. Current explanations for these effects rely upon the fact that the two messages are presented over separate input channels. The present study tested this hypothesis directly by presenting two messages simultaneously to a single auditory channel. Groups of Ss were instructed to recall two pairs of digits presented simultaneously over a single channel (1) in any order (free recall), (2) in the order received (simultaneous order), or (3) in sequential groups (successive order). Ss in the free recall task preferred recalling items in successive order. However, Ss instructed to recall in simultaneous order were as accurate as those instructed to recall in successive order. These data imply that accuracy with, but not preference for, the successive order of recall depends upon whether input is to one or two channels.     

Source recall enhances children's discrimination of seen and heard events

The effects of rehearsing actions by source (slideshow vs. story) and of test modality (picture vs. verbal) on source monitoring were examined. Seven- to 8-year-old children (N = 30) saw a slideshow event and heard a story about a similar event. One to 2 days later, they recalled the events by source (source recall), recalled the events without reference to source (no-source-cue recall), or engaged in no recall. Seven to 8 days later, all children received verbal and picture source-monitoring tests. Children in the source recall group were less likely than children in the other groups to claim they saw actions merely heard in the story. No-source-cue recall impaired source identification of story actions. The picture test enhanced recognition, but not source monitoring, of slide actions. Increasing the distinctiveness of the target events (Experiment 2) allowed the picture test to facilitate slideshow action discrimination by children in the no-recall group.     

Affective valence of words impacts recall from auditory working memory

Abstract

There is limited evidence on the influence of affective stimuli on auditory working memory. The reported study investigated whether emotional auditory words interfere with ongoing auditory processing of words in auditory working memory. On each trial, words with negative, neutral, and positive affective valence were simultaneously presented on three different speakers. Participants recalled the word presented from the centre speaker first and then recalled the words presented from the side speakers. More negative and positive words compared to neutral words were recalled from the centre speaker. After recall of negative and positive words from the centre speaker, the subsequent first recall of words from the side speakers was reduced, regardless of anxiety level of the participant. The emotional interference effect suggests that emotional words interfere with ongoing central processing due to the attentional dwell on the information in auditory working memory.     

Source memory in the absence of successful cued recall

Five experiments were conducted to address the question of whether source information could be accessed in the absence of being able to recall an item. The authors used a paired-associate learning paradigm in which cue-target word pairs were studied, and target recall was requested in the presence of the cue. When target recall failed, participants were asked to make a source judgment of whether a man or woman spoke the unrecalled item. In 3 of the 5 experiments, source accuracy was at or very close to chance. By contrast, if cue-target pairs were studied multiple times or participants knew in advance of learning that a predictive judgment would be required, then predictive source accuracy was well above chance. These data are suggestive that context information may not play a very large role in metacognitive judgments such as feeling-of-knowing ratings or putting one into a tip-of-the-tongue state without strong and specific encoding procedures. These same results also highlight the important role that item memory plays in retrieving information about the context in which an item was experienced.     

Contextual variability and serial position effects in free recall.

In immediate free recall, words recalled successively tend to come from nearby serial positions. M. J. Kahana (1996) documented this effect and showed that this tendency, which the authors refer to as the lag recency effect, is well described by a variant of the search of associative memory (SAM) model (J. G. W. Raaijmakers & R. M. Shiffrin, 1980, 1981). In 2 experiments, participants performed immediate, delayed, and continuous distractor free recall under conditions designed to minimize rehearsal. The lag recency effect, previously observed in immediate free recall, was also observed in delayed and continuous distractor free recall. Although two-store memory models, such as SAM, readily account for the end-of-list recency effect in immediate free recall, and its attenuation in delayed free recall, these models fail to account for the long-term recency effect. By means of analytic simulations, the authors show that both the end of list recency effect and the lag recency effect, across all distractor conditions, can be explained by a single-store model in which context, retrieved with each recalled item, serves as a cue for subsequent recalls.     

Repetition learning in the immediate serial recall of visual and auditory materials

In 5 experiments, a Hebb repetition effect, that is, improved immediate serial recall of an (unannounced) repeating list, was demonstrated in the immediate serial recall of visual materials, even when use of phonological short-term memory was blocked by concurrent articulation. The learning of a repeatedly presented letter list in one modality (auditory or visual) did not transfer to give improved performance on the same list in the other modality. This result was not replicated for word lists, however, for which asymmetric transfer was observed. Inferences are made about the structure of short-term memory and about the nature of the Hebb repetition effect.     

Large auditory and small visual effects in the recall of consonant letters

Eighty-six adults serially recalled lists of visually presented consonant letters similar in auditory or visual features or dissimilar in both feature sets. There were significantly more errors at every auditory list position than at the corresponding visual and neutral list positions, which did not themselves differ. There was a positive correlation between the tendency toward phonetic coding and overall performance, with 75 subjects making more errors on the auditory list than either of the other lists. The eight subjects who made more errors on the visual list showed poor performance in the recall of all lists. Factors governing the perceivability of stimuli apparently do not continue to operate significantly in controlling their recallability, at least in the case of veridical visual input.     

Source credibility,attitudes, and the recall of past behaviours

The hypothesis that individuals' memory for their past behaviours may be biased toward apparent consistency with their current attitudes was tested by exposing subjects to a message that argued against frequent toothbrushing. Some subjects believed that the source of this message was an expert (high credibility condition), whereas other subjects learned after the message that the speaker was misinformed (low credibility condition). Subjects in the high credibility condition expressed less favourable attitudes toward toothbrushing and reported that they had brushed their teeth less often in the preceding four weeks than did subjects in the low credibility condition. A three-week follow-up showed that the attitudinal difference was still significant but that estimates of past toothbrushing did not differ reliably between the two conditions. The results suggest that when attitudes are very salient, they increase the accessibility of consistent behaviours in memory.     

Controlled recall of verbal material in temporal lobe epilepsy

This study used a guided process‐dissociation procedure to examine the contribution of controlled and automatic uses of memory to a cued‐recall task in 24 patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE: 12 left‐sided; 12 right‐sided), and 12 neurotypical controls. In an inclusion task, participants attempted to complete three‐letter word stems using previously studied words, in an exclusion task they aimed to avoid using studied words to complete stems. Patients with left TLE produced fewer target completions under inclusion conditions. Completion rates were not significantly different under exclusion conditions. Estimates derived from process dissociation calculations, confirmed that the cued‐recall deficit in left TLE patients arose entirely from impairment in controlled memory processes. There were no group differences in the estimates of automatic processes. Recognition judgements of stems corresponding to studied words did not differ between the groups. Overall the results support the view that controlled and automatic memory processes are mediated by separable neural systems. Hippocampal and related structures within the left MTL are more important than corresponding right hemisphere structures for the controlled retrieval of verbal material. In contrast, the findings from this study do not suggest that the left and right temporal lobes make a differential contribution to automatic memory processing. The theoretical and clinical relevance of these findings are discussed.