Acoustic Confusions in Immediate Memory

Conrad, Rupert

doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1964.tb00899.x

Cited by 1,249 publications

(723 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Mixed sets within the verbal domain, such as combinations of digits and letters (Sanders & Schroots, 1969), arguably do not benefit from reduced feature-space overlap, because all verbal materials are encoded primarily through their phonological features, so that they share the feature space of phonetic features (Conrad, 1964;Baddeley, 1966). However, heterogeneous verbal lists benefit from reduced interference by confusion: A confusion of a digit with a letter is less likely than confusions within each class of stimuli.…”

Section: Effects Of Domain and Of Set Heterogeneity (A3 -A5mentioning

confidence: 99%

What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

234

208

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We review the evidence for the three principal theoretical contenders that vie to explain why and how working memory capacity is limited. We examine the possibility that capacity limitations arise from temporal decay; we examine whether they might reflect a limitation in cognitive resources; and we ask whether capacity might be limited because of mutual interference of representations in working memory. We evaluate each hypothesis against a common set of findings reflecting the capacity limit: The set-size effect and its modulation by domain-specificity and heterogeneity of the memory set; the effects of unfilled retention intervals and of distractor processing in the retention interval; and the pattern of correlates of working-memory tests. We conclude that---at least for verbal memoranda---a decay explanation is untenable. A resource-based view remains tenable but has difficulty accommodating several findings. The interference approach has its own set of difficulties but accounts best for the set of findings, and therefore appears to present the most promising approach for future development.Keywords: working memory, decay, resources, interference, individual differences WM Capacity 3 What Limits Working Memory Capacity?Working memory (WM) is the system that holds mental representations available for processing. Its limited capacity is a limiting factor for the complexity of our thoughts (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007;Oberauer, 2009). Measures of WM capacity have been identified as major determinants of cognitive development in childhood (Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003) and in old age (Park et al., 2002;Salthouse, 1994), as well as of individual differences in intellectual abilities (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003;Jarrold & Towse, 2006). Understanding why WM capacity is limited is therefore an essential step toward understanding why human cognitive abilities are limited, why individuals differ in these abilities, and how abilities develop over the lifespan.In this article we use the term WM capacity in a descriptive sense, referring to the fact that people can hold only a limited amount of mental content available for processing. The capacity limit is usually operationalized as a limit on how much new information people can remember over short periods of time (in the order of seconds), but there are reasons to believe (discussed below) that the capacity limit also applies to people's ability to make information in the current environment simultaneously available for processing.Hypotheses about what limits WM capacity can be organized into three groups: (1) Some theories assume that representations in WM decay over time, unless decay is prevented by some form of restoration process such as rehearsal. According to this view, WM has limited capacity because only a limited amount of information can be rehearsed before it fades away into an irrecoverable state (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Schweickert & Boruff, 1986). (2) Alternatively, WM capacity has been characterized as a limited resourc...

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Section: Effects Of Domain and Of Set Heterogeneity (A3 -A5mentioning

confidence: 99%

What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

234

208

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The first result that is strongly indicative of the usc of a speech-based store was termed the phonological similarity effect (e.g., Conrad, 1964;Baddeley, 1968). Briefly, the recall of lists of rhyming items (e.g., the list of letter narncs "GCBTPV") is reliably poorer than the recall of lists of non-rhyming items (e.g., "HRQXBL").…”

Section: Immediate Serial Recall (Isr)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning and production of movement sequences: Behavioral, neurophysiological, and modeling perspectives

Rhodes

Bullock

Verwey

et al. 2004

Human Movement Science

188

165

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“…The phonological loop component of the model is in turn composed of a temporary phonological store whose contents decay with time unless refreshed via an articulatory control process. A number of key phenomena have been used to support the phonological loop concept, among them effects of phonological similarity (Conrad, 1964;Conrad & Hull, 1964;Wickelgren, 1965), word length (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975), irrelevant sound (Colle & Welsh, 1976;Salame & Baddeley, 1982), and concurrent articulation (Baddeley, Lewis, & Vallar, 1984;Levy, 1971;Murray, 1968). On this view, while participants must engage in language production to complete the recall task, an independent storage mechanism is responsible for memory maintenance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

Acheson

MacDonald

2009

Journal of Memory and Language

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Many accounts of working memory posit specialized storage mechanisms for the maintenance of serial order. We explore an alternative, that maintenance is achieved through temporary activation in the language production architecture. Four experiments examined the extent to which the phonological similarity effect can be explained as a sublexical speech error. Phonologically similar nonword stimuli were ordered to create tongue twister or control materials used in four tasks: reading aloud, immediate spoken recall, immediate typed recall, and serial recognition. Dependent measures from working memory (recall accuracy) and language production (speech errors) fields were used. Even though lists were identical except for item order, robust effects of tongue twisters were observed. Speech error analyses showed that errors were better described as phoneme rather than item ordering errors. The distribution of speech errors was comparable across all experiments and exhibited syllable-position effects, suggesting an important role for production processes. Implications for working memory and language production are discussed.

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Acoustic Confusions in Immediate Memory

Cited by 1,249 publications

References 4 publications

What limits working memory capacity?

What limits working memory capacity?

Learning and production of movement sequences: Behavioral, neurophysiological, and modeling perspectives

Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

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