Maintenance of memory for melodies: Articulation or attentional refreshing?

Abstract

Past research on the effects of articulatory suppression on working memory for nonverbal sounds has been characterized by discrepant findings, which suggests that multiple mechanisms may be involved in the rehearsal of nonverbal sounds. In two experiments we examined the potential roles of two theoretical mechanisms of verbal working memory-articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing-in the maintenance of memory for short melodies. In both experiments, participants performed a same-different melody comparison task. During an 8-s retention interval, interference tasks were introduced to suppress articulatory rehearsal, attentional refreshing, or both. In Experiment 1, only the conditions that featured articulatory suppression resulted in worse memory performance than in a control condition, and the suppression of both attentional refreshing and articulatory rehearsal concurrently did not impair memory more than articulatory suppression alone. Experiment 2 reproduced these findings and also confirmed that the locus of interference was articulatory and not auditory (i.e., the interference was not attributable to the sound of participants' own voices during articulatory suppression). Both experiments suggested that articulatory rehearsal played a role in the maintenance of melodies in memory, whereas attentional refreshing did not. We discuss potential theoretical implications regarding the mechanisms used for the rehearsal of nonverbal sounds in working memory.

Articulatory Suppression Impairs Working Memory for Ostensibly Unvocalizable Abstract Sounds

“…Taken together, the results suggested that subvocal articulatory rehearsal plays a role in working memory for nonverbal sounds discriminable only by timbre, whereas attentional refreshing does not. The results mirrored the pattern of findings for memory for melodies reported in Nees, Corrini, et al (2017), which lends some support to the hypothesis that pitch and timbre share a rehearsal mechanism in working memory. Across all conditions, the d' scores were relatively low.…”

“…Research to examine the effects of articulatory suppression on nonverbal musical sounds, however, often has shown that articulatory suppression does impair memory for those sounds. For example, across multiple studies, articulatory suppression has been shown to impair memory for melodies (Logie & Edworthy, 1986;Nees, Corrini, Leong, & Harris, 2017;Schendel & Palmer, 2007). Articulatory suppression also has been shown to interfere with other musical tasks that seem to have a nonverbal memory component, including judging the pitch content of recognizable melodies (Smith, Wilson, & Reisberg, 1995) and judging differences between musical notation and heard melodies (Brodsky, Kessler, Rubinstein, Ginsborg, & Henik, 2008).…”

“…), whereas any concurrent task that requires attention should disrupt maintenance that depends on attentional refreshing in working memory. Nees, Corrini, et al (2017) examined the respective roles of subvocalization and attentional refreshing in working memory rehearsal for brief four-note melodies. The melodies were followed by a retention interval, after which participants heard a probe sound and indicated whether the probe had been a note in the original melody.…”

“…On the whole, then, experiments have mostly shown that concurrent articulation of unrelated material interferes with maintenance of to-be-remembered nonverbal stimuli-such as melodies-when those stimuli are discriminable by pitch (Brodsky et al, 2008;Koelsch et al, 2009;Li et al, 2013;Logie & Edworthy, 1986;Nees, Corrini, et al, 2017;Schendel & Palmer, 2007). In studies of memory for timbre-in which pitch information does not aid the memory task-the effects of articulatory suppression have been inconsistent.…”

“…and were instructed to solve the problems as they read them aloud. In past research (Camos et al, 2009;Nees, Corrini, et al, 2017), reading already-solved problems during retention intervals has been used to suppress articulatory rehearsal, but not attentional resources, whereas reading and solving problems suppresses the use of both articulatory rehearsal and attention to aid maintenance of the to-be-remembered stimuli. In the condition with only attentional refreshing suppression (ARS), participants silently viewed unsolved math problems and gave answers by pressing keys on the computer keyboard without speaking the problems aloud (see .…”