Keeping timbre in mind: Working memory for complex sounds that can't be verbalized.

Golubock, Jason L.; Janata, Petr

doi:10.1037/a0029720

Cited by 26 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 96 publications

(133 reference statements)

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“…A big discrepancy in terms of response time was found between the list of 2 and 3 tones, suggesting that the participants were able to keep up to 2 simple tones in the focus of attention. The low capacity found in Experiment 3 is consistent with a recent study by Golubock and Janata (2012), which investigated auditory WM capacity for sounds with the same frequency but different timbres and found capacity of up to 2.56 items even with a short 1-s delay and increased perceptual variability among list items. The highest capacity estimate was only 1.80 items with a long 6-s delay which is the duration that we used in this study 4 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

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Estimating working memory capacity for lists of nonverbal sounds

Cowan

Saults

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Working memory (WM) capacity limit has been extensively studied in the domains of visual and verbal stimuli. Previous studies have suggested a fixed WM capacity of typically about 3 or 4 items, based on the number of items in working memory reaching a plateau after several items as the set size increases. However, the fixed WM capacity estimate appears to rely on categorical information in the stimulus set (Olsson & Poom, 2005). We designed a series of experiments to investigate nonverbal auditory WM capacity and its dependence on categorical information. Experiments 1 and 2 used simple tones and revealed capacity limit of up to 2 tones following a 6-s retention interval. Importantly, performance was significantly higher at set sizes 2, 3, and 4 when the frequency difference between target and test tones was relatively large. In Experiment 3, we added categorical information to the simple tones, and the effect of tone change magnitude decreased. Maximal capacity for each individual was just over 3 sounds, in the range of typical visual procedures. We propose that two types of information, categorical and detailed acoustic information, are kept in WM, and that categorical information is critical for high WM performance.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…The highest capacity estimate was only 1.80 items with a long 6-s delay which is the duration that we used in this study 4 . The capacity estimates in Golubock and Janata (2012) are even lower than those in Experiment 3 in this study, probably because their stimuli are more difficult to categorize than the stimuli we used in Experiment 3.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 67%

Estimating working memory capacity for lists of nonverbal sounds

Cowan

Saults

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…First, we have shown that timbre information can be maintained over the short term even with higher item loads, essentially replicating a previous study of Golubock and Janata (2013). Second, we have shown that this maintenance is active; in other words, despite being subject to a very slow decline, performance in an auditory short-term memory task can additionally be disrupted by auditory imagery.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…However, these experiments were concerned with fine-grained differences in timbre for which verbal labeling might be extremely difficult. Golubock and Janata (2013) recently estimated working memory capacity for sounds differing in timbre on broader acoustic feature dimensions (Experiment 2) and found a similar decline in capacity estimates over time. This finding, however, does not rule out the possibility that active maintenance mechanisms can slow down the decay.…”

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confidence: 99%

Maintenance of auditory-nonverbal information in working memory

Soemer

Saito

2015

Psychon Bull Rev

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According to the multicomponent view of working memory, both auditory-nonverbal information and auditoryverbal information are stored in a phonological code and are maintained by an articulation-based rehearsal mechanism (Baddeley, 2012). Two experiments have been carried out to investigate this hypothesis using sound materials that are difficult to label verbally and difficult to articulate. Participants were required to maintain 2 to 4 sounds differing in timbre over a delay of up to 12 seconds while performing different secondary tasks. While there was no convincing evidence for articulatory rehearsal as a main maintenance mechanism for auditory-nonverbal information, the results suggest that processes similar or identical to auditory imagery might contribute to maintenance. We discuss the implications of these results for multicomponent models of working memory.Keywords Auditory short-term memory . Working memory . Phonological loop . Timbre . Auditory imagery Decades of research have provided a great deal of support for the multicomponent model of working memory that distinguishes between domain-specific resources for verbal and visuospatial information (see Baddeley, 2012, for a recent version). Within this framework, evidence has been accumulated for a verbal short-term store based on a phonological code and for an articulation-based maintenance mechanism operating on the store's contents. Furthermore, it has been suggested that this Bphonological loop^component also handles auditory-nonverbal information, even types of auditorynonverbal information that are difficult to encode phonologically and are difficult or impossible to articulate. This report investigates one such type, namely, timbre information (the quality or uniqueness of a sound). We asked were whether maintenance for such auditory-nonverbal information is accomplished by the articulatory rehearsal, as assumed in the multicomponent model, or by other potential mechanisms.Although there is a rich body of literature on auditory shortterm memory predating the rise of the multicomponent model, this early research was mainly concerned with various forms of passive auditory storage (Cowan, 1984). In contrast, active maintenance of auditory-nonverbal information is a rather new research area (e.g., Williamson, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2010) and, to date, not much is known about potential mechanisms that prolong the survival of auditory features over a delay of several seconds.Within the framework of the multicomponent model, associating auditory information with the phonological loop was not without reason. For example, it is well known that irrelevant sound presented during a delay in a short-term memory task disrupts verbal maintenance (Colle & Welsh, 1976), which has been explained by direct access of auditory information into the phonological store. However, a challenge to the notion that auditory information is maintained in the loop arises from the assumption that its representational code is phonological. While it is true that phonemes are...

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“…In recent research reports on nonverbal auditory stimuli, the term “WM” has been used to describe memory over any period of time whatsoever following hearing a sound. Golubock and Janata (2013) defined retention of a sound for as brief as 1 s following stimulation as a WM task. Using retention intervals as brief as 3 s, Soemer and Saito (2015) likewise implied that the retention of a sound for any duration following stimulation must be accomplished by an active WM maintenance mechanism (also see Schulze et al, 2012).…”

Section: Forgetting Sensory Memory?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Have We Forgotten Auditory Sensory Memory? Retention Intervals in Studies of Nonverbal Auditory Working Memory

Nees

2016

Front. Psychol.

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Researchers have shown increased interest in mechanisms of working memory for nonverbal sounds such as music and environmental sounds. These studies often have used two-stimulus comparison tasks: two sounds separated by a brief retention interval (often 3–5 s) are compared, and a “same” or “different” judgment is recorded. Researchers seem to have assumed that sensory memory has a negligible impact on performance in auditory two-stimulus comparison tasks. This assumption is examined in detail in this comment. According to seminal texts and recent research reports, sensory memory persists in parallel with working memory for a period of time following hearing a stimulus and can influence behavioral responses on memory tasks. Unlike verbal working memory studies that use serial recall tasks, research paradigms for exploring nonverbal working memory—especially two-stimulus comparison tasks—may not be differentiating working memory from sensory memory processes in analyses of behavioral responses, because retention interval durations have not excluded the possibility that the sensory memory trace drives task performance. This conflation of different constructs may be one contributor to discrepant research findings and the resulting proliferation of theoretical conjectures regarding mechanisms of working memory for nonverbal sounds.

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Keeping timbre in mind: Working memory for complex sounds that can't be verbalized.

Cited by 26 publications

References 96 publications

Estimating working memory capacity for lists of nonverbal sounds

Estimating working memory capacity for lists of nonverbal sounds

Maintenance of auditory-nonverbal information in working memory

Have We Forgotten Auditory Sensory Memory? Retention Intervals in Studies of Nonverbal Auditory Working Memory

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