Phonological factors in STM: Similarity and the unattended speech effect

Salamé, Pierre; Baddeley, Alan

doi:10.3758/bf03330135

Cited by 139 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Thus the abolition of the effect in poor readers does not indicateabnormalcognitivefunctioning. This conclusionis further supportedby a recent study by Salameand Baddeley (1986), which showsthat adultstoo fail to exhibit a phonological similarity effect under conditions of high task difficulty. It seems likely that both of the groupsin thepresentstudyresponded to the difficult task demandsby either reducing the amount of rehearsal or failing to rehearsealtogether.…”

Section: Pronunciation Of Easy Nonwordssupporting

confidence: 73%

The use of phonological information by good and poor readers in memory and reading tasks

Holligan

Johnston

1988

Memory & Cognition

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There has been a recent debate about the utilization of phonological information by poor readers in both working memory and reading tasks. The purpose of the first experiment in this study was to examine whether the absence of phonological similarity effects in working memory reported in previous studies was due to inappropriate levels of task difficulty. Poor readers and their reading age controls were found to show a normal effect when the memory task was at an appropriate level of difficulty, but no effect when a large number of items had to be recalled. However, in a recognition memory task, the poor readers chose orthographically similar pairs, whereas the reading-age and chronological age controls chose phonologically similar pairs. The purpose of a final experiment was to determine whether or not the good and poor readers could be differentiated in terms of their reading strategies; both groups showed regularity effects in a naming task and pseudohomophone effects in a lexical decision task. However, although poor readers could read three-letter nonwords as well as their controls, they were significantly impaired in reading more complex one-syllable nonwords. It was concluded that poor readers may have a phonological dysfunction in some aspects of reading that is unrelated to whether or not they show phonological similarity effects in working memory. Impaired segmentation skills may underly their difficulties in both reading and nonreading tasks.Many studies have been carried out in order to examine the idea that poor readers are deficient in utilizing phonological information in both memory and reading tasks. In a review of the literature, Vellutino (1979) has concluded that poor readers are deficient in their use of verbal or phonological information in both short-and long-term memory tasks. Similarly, Frith (1985) has concluded that poor readers suffer primarily from a phonological dysfunction in reading.In the memory literature, a number of studies have shown that poor readers use phonological information less effectively than good readers. Shankweiler, Liberman, Mark, Fowler, and Fischer (1979) demonstrated that 8-year-old poor readers, in a serial order recall task involving memory of letter strings, showed smaller effects of phonological similarity than did chronological age controls. They concluded that poor readers have poorer access to a phonetic code or access to a degraded phonetic representation. A number of other studies have since confirmed these findings. Mann, Liberman, and Shankweiler (1980) showed similar effects when words and sentences were presented for recall, and Siegel and Linder (1984) replicated the Shankweiler et al. findings on 7-to 8-yearold poor readers.We should like to thank the pupils and staff at schools in Dundee and Edinburgh for their assistance. In particular, we should like to thank Johnston (1982), however, found normal effects of phonological similarity in 9-, 12-, and l4-year-old poor readers, and cautiously concluded that such reduced effects must be restricted...

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Section: Pronunciation Of Easy Nonwordssupporting

confidence: 73%

The use of phonological information by good and poor readers in memory and reading tasks

Holligan

Johnston

1988

Memory & Cognition

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“…This pattern was interpreted in terms of a tendency of the subjects to shift from pure phonological processing towards engaging semantic processes as well when performance dropped below some critical level. This is also supported by additional behavioral results (Baddeley, 1966a,b;Hanley and Bakopoulou, 2003;Larsen and Baddeley, 2003;Salame and Baddeley, 1986). Furthermore, there are several studies in the WM imaging literature manipulating load in the absence of external distractors, which have reported quite different patterns of DLPFC activity as a function of load, including linear (Braver et al, 1997), stepwise , or inverted U (Callicott et al, 1999).…”

Section: Irrelevant Speech Effectssupporting

confidence: 64%

“…Beyond these potential explanations there are also several more interesting possibilities. For example, Salame and Baddeley (1986) investigated the interaction between the irrelevant speech effects and phonological similarity effects across a range of list lengths. For sequences of five, six, and seven items, marked effects of similarity were observed under both control and irrelevant speech conditions, while at a list length of eight, the similarity effect disappeared.…”

Section: Irrelevant Speech Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The irrelevant speech effect and working memory load

2004

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Irrelevant speech impairs the immediate serial recall of visually presented material. Previously, we have shown that the irrelevant speech effect (ISE) was associated with a relative decrease of regional blood flow in cortical regions subserving the verbal working memory, in particular the superior temporal cortex. In this extension of the previous study, the working memory load was increased and an increased activity as a response to irrelevant speech was noted in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We suggest that the two studies together provide some basic insights as to the nature of the irrelevant speech effect. Firstly, no area in the brain can be ascribed as the single locus of the irrelevant speech effect. Instead, the functional neuroanatomical substrate to the effect can be characterized in terms of changes in networks of functionally interrelated areas. Secondly, the areas that are sensitive to the irrelevant speech effect are also generically activated by the verbal working memory task itself. Finally, the impact of irrelevant speech and related brain activity depends on working memory load as indicated by the differences between the present and the previous study. From a brain perspective, the irrelevant speech effect may represent a complex phenomenon that is a composite of several underlying mechanisms, which depending on the working memory load, include top-down inhibition as well as recruitment of compensatory support and control processes. We suggest that, in the low-load condition, a selection process by an inhibitory top-down modulation is sufficient, whereas in the high-load condition, at or above working memory span, auxiliary adaptive cognitive resources are recruited as compensation. D

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“…In other words, phonologically similar items should be recalled worse than phonologically different items even in the presence of irrelevant speech. Although this prediction has been supported in some studies (Jones & Macken, 1995;1 Larsen, Baddeley, & Andrade, 2000;Salamé & Baddeley, 1986), the evidence is mixed. Neither Colle and Welsh (1976) nor Surprenant, Neath, and LeCompte (1999) observed a phonological similarity effect in the presence of irrelevant speech.…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%