Context Effects in Auditory Implicit Memory

Abstract

The context effect in implicit memory is the finding that presentation of words in meaningful context reduces or eliminates repetition priming compared to words presented in isolation. Virtually all of the research on the context effect has been conducted in the visual modality but preliminary results raise the question of whether context effects are less likely in auditory priming. Context effects in the auditory modality were systematically examined in five experiments using the auditory implicit tests of word-fragment and word-stem completion. The first three experiments revealed the classical context effect in auditory priming: Words heard in isolation produced substantial priming, whereas there was little priming for the words heard in meaningful passages. Experiments 4 and 5 revealed that a meaningful context is not required for the context effect to be obtained: Words presented in an unrelated audio stream produced less priming than words presented individually and no more priming than words presented in meaningful passages. Although context effects are often explained in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) framework, the present results are better explained by Masson and MacLeod's (2000) reduced-individuation hypothesis.

The role of the native language in auditory and visual context effect modalities

“…Interestingly, although Hebrew speakers performed consistently in both modalities, English speakers performed better in the auditory condition. The Hebrew speakers' performance is similar to that reported by Besken and Mulligan () and Brand and Jolles (), whose results demonstrated similar performance in visual and auditory modalities.…”

“…The study aimed to investigate the interaction between CE as elicited by the consistency of language of presentation (Hebrew vs. English), with native language (Hebrew vs. English), in both auditory and visual modalities. Although previous studies have already demonstrated the CE of modality of presentation (Besken & Mulligan, 2010;Loveman et al, 2002;Vakil et al, 1997), this is one of the first studies to examine the relationships between these variables simultaneously (i.e., consistency of language of presentation, native language, and modality).…”

“…The modality of presentation (the modality in which the information is presented to the participants) also serves as a type of context (Besken & Mulligan, ; Loveman, van Hooff, & Gale, ; Vakil et al, ) and aids in the memory of items when the modality remains consistent between the learning and test phases. Numerous studies have found poorer memory for items when the modality of presentation (for instance, learning material visually and being tested on it orally) was altered—a modality effect (Loveman et al, ; Mulligan, Smith, & Spataro, ; Schacter, Dobbins, & Schnyer, ; Vakil et al, ).…”

“…The most commonly researched type of modality is visual, with less research conducted in the auditory domain. Researchers have found that visual presentation acts as a primer for visual identification, but less research has been conducted in the auditory domain, and different studies have reported different effects on memory (Besken & Mulligan, 2010;Loveman et al, 2002;Mulligan et al, 2016). For instance, Mulligan et al (2016) presented participants with a memory recognition task in both visual and auditory domains and demonstrated that material presented visually led to greater recognition than material presented orally.…”

CINET: A Brain-Inspired Deep Learning Context-Integrating Neural Network Model for Resolving Ambiguous Stimuli

“…The CINET is inspired by the context effect, which is the influence of the surrounding environment on the perception of stimuli [1][2][3]. Numerous studies related to the context effect have shown that the integration of contextual information improves the interpretation of spoken words [4,5], written letters and words [6][7][8], physical objects [9][10][11], sounds [12,13], smells [14], tastes [15], threats [16], colors [17], and facial emotions [18][19][20]. The context effect has also been widely studied to show how contextual information is used to uniquely resolve the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli [7,8,[21][22][23][24][25][26].…”