Modality effects in retrieval of information from short-term memory

Burrows, David

doi:10.3758/bf03206269

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The present result conflicts with results reported by Burrows (1972) who found that a single, sequentially presented set of mixed auditory and visual items was not checked at a more rapid rate than pure visual or pure auditory sets. Procedural differences between this experiment and Burrows' (1972) experiment might be responsible for this difference: Having two streams of purely visual and purely auditory information, as in the present experiment, may make it easier to maintain the information in two separate channels that can be scanned in parallel.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

“…Procedural differences between this experiment and Burrows' (1972) experiment might be responsible for this difference: Having two streams of purely visual and purely auditory information, as in the present experiment, may make it easier to maintain the information in two separate channels that can be scanned in parallel. The Burrows (1972) procedure of randomly mixing auditory and visual items may require shifts in attention that make separation of channels difficult. Experiment II was designed to test this hypothesis by setting up a memory retrieval task that requires separation of auditorily and visually presented information and comparing the performance of a group that has simultaneous presentation of auditory-visual pairs, as in Experiment I, with a group which has items presented one at a time with random shifts between modalities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since parallel scanning logically requires such separation, relative performance on this task should be an indicator of the ease with which parallel scanning can be executed given simultaneous or sequential presentation. Superior performance by the simultaneous group would then help to explain why there was evidence for parallel scanning in Experiment I, but not in the Burrows (1972) study.…”

Section: Experiments IImentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parallel scanning of auditory and visual information

Burrows

Solomon

1975

Memory & Cognition

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Two experiments involving memory retrieval of auditorilv and visuallv presented materials were performed. In Experiment I, subjects were presented with memory sets of 1, 2, or 4 stimuli and then with a test item to be classified as belonging or not belonging to the memory set. In Condition 1, each memory stimulus was a single, auditorily presented letter. In Condition 2, each memory stimulus was a visually presented letter. In Conditions 3 and 4, each memory stimulus was a pair of letters, one presented visually and the other auditorily. Mean reaction time (RT) for the classification task increased as a function of number of memory stimuli at equal rates for all four conditions. This was interpreted as evidence for a parallel scanning process in Conditions 3 and 4 where the auditory item and visual item of each memory stimulus pair can be scanned simultaneously. Experiment II compared memory retrieval for a simultaneous condition in which auditory and visual memory items were presented as pairs with a sequential condition in which mixed auditory-visual memory sets were presented one item at a time. RTs were shorter for the simultaneous condition. This was interpreted as evidence that parallel scanning may depend upon memory input parameters.These two studies investigate the problem of how people retrieve information from memory. In particular, they are concerned with whether people are able to retrieve information about two or more different sets of memory information at the same time. If such simultaneous retrieval is possible, then an assumption of parallel processing can be built into models of the retrieval process, making possible theories of considerable power.Experiment I was an attempt to demonstrate simultaneous retrieval of auditorily and visually presented information from short-term memory.Sternberg (1966, 1969) has argued that retrieval from short-term memory involves a serial scan of the items in memory. He based this argument on the results of a series of experiments in which subjects were required to decide whether or not a test item was included in a short list of previously memorized items. Typically, the reaction time (RT) for the required two-choice response is a linearly increasing function of the number of items in the memory set. Each additional memory item seems to add a constant to the time required for the decision. This suggests that, before a decision is made, subject compares the test item with each memory item. Each comparison requires (on the average) one unit of time. The linearly increasing function reflects the increasing number of comparisons required when additional memory items are involved. The slope of the function is a measure of the rate of retrieval.If large amounts of memory information are involved in a retrieval situation, a simple serial scan would be inefficient. Any general theory of how humans retrieve information from their memories must almost certainly involve processes more complex than simple serial scans.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experiments IImentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parallel scanning of auditory and visual information

Burrows

Solomon

1975

Memory & Cognition

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“…Major evidence of the existence for the auditory sensory memory comes from modality-effect experiments: when sequences of auditory or visual stimuli are presented to a subject who is prompted to recall them after the last one is delivered, he remembers the last few items better if they are auditory rather than visual (Conrad & Hull, 1968;Burrows, 1972). This phenomenon suggests that auditory stimuli are kept in a sensory memory longer than the corresponding visual information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Human Auditory Sensory Memory Trace Persists about 10 sec: Neuromagnetic Evidence

Sams¹,

Hari²,

Rif³

et al. 1993

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

329

224

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AbStfaCtNeuromagnetic responses were recorded to frequent "standard tones of lo00 Hz and to infrequent 1100-Hz "deviant" tones with a 24-channel planar SQUID gradiometer. Stimuli were presented at constant interstimulus intervals ( ISIS) ranging from 0.75 to 12 sec. The standards evoked a prominent 100-msec response, NlOOm, which increased in amplitude with increasing ISI. NlOOm could be dissociated into two subcomponents with different source areas. The posterior component, N1OOmP, increased when the IS1 grew up to 6 sec, whereas the more anterior component, N1OOma, probably continued its growth beyond the 12-sec ISI. At ISIs from 0.75 to 9 sec, the deviants elicited additionally a mismatch field (MMF). The equivalent sources of both NlOOm and h4h4F were at the supra-

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“…They interpreted this to mean that the subjects scanned the visual and auditory lists simultaneously. In an earlier experiment, Burrows (1972) found no evidence that subjects scanned visual and auditory lists simultaneously when the items had been presented one at a time, with visual and auditory items randomly intermixed. Ryan (1983) recently claimed further evidence for the simultaneous, independent scanning of two lists, a fixed list presented prior to a sequence of test trials and a varied list that varied from trial to trial.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scanning two memorized lists

Elkind

Corballis

1986

Memory & Cognition

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Subjects were timed as they decided whether singly presented probe words belonged to one or the other of two memorized lists, or to neither list. Each list varied in length from one to four words. Reaction times increased linearly with the combined number of words in the two lists. When there was no a priori basis for distinguishing the lists, the slope of the function for positive test probes was 33-35 msec per word higher than that for negative probes. The slope for negative probes was 58 msec per word in one experiment and 46 msec per word in another. This suggests that subjects first scanned the combined lists exhaustively to determine whether the probe was present; if it was not, they made a negative response, and if it was, they scanned again to determine which list it was in. When the words in the two lists were conceptually distinct (one list representing animate and the other inanimate objects), the difference in slope was reduced to only 6 msec per word, suggesting that the second scan was all but eliminated.In the item-recognition task pioneered by Sternberg

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Modality effects in retrieval of information from short-term memory

Cited by 24 publications

References 13 publications

Parallel scanning of auditory and visual information

Parallel scanning of auditory and visual information

The Human Auditory Sensory Memory Trace Persists about 10 sec: Neuromagnetic Evidence

Scanning two memorized lists

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