Precategorical acoustic storage (PAS)

Abstract

Fig. I. An incomplete conceptual diagram of information flow in immediate memory tasks. No reference whatever to locations or pathways in the nervous system isimplied. PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTION OF THE MODELThe overall schema in which we are operating is given in Fig. I. Our preliminary assumptions are based on a clear distinction between information which has been categorized (i.e., identified or perceived) and information which has not been categorized. Like Tulving (1968) we see no defensible reason for distinguishing between perception and learning, with respect to individual elements. Once categorization has argument is, on the contrary, that PAS bears important qualitative similarities to the comparable precategorical storage system in vision (Sperling, 1963) though the relevant time parameters appear to be of different order of magnitude. While other writers (e.g., Mackworth, 1965;Neisser, 1967) have previously considered the existence of an acoustic-equivalent to the visual sensory store (and have suggested longer duration in the case of audition than in vision) there has been no comprehensive attempt to make explicit the properties of such a store. In considering these properties, our main objective has been to give an explanation for various serial position data which have been reported in immediate memory. Although the system is in this sense ad hoc it leads readily to a number of testable implications, two of which were confirmed in the experiments reported herein. We shall first describe the PAS system and its properties; second, review the evidence in its favor from both our laboratory and others'; and finally, suggest the relation of the model to a general approach to memory theory.

Exploring the suffix effect in serial visuospatial short-term memory

“…Although the suffix effect has been examined repeatedly in the verbal literature (e.g., Bloom & Watkins, 1999;Crowder & Morton, 1969;Penney, 1985;Watkins & Watkins, 1980), aside from the present study we are not aware of any investigation directly examining the suffix effect in visuospatial serial memory. The suffix effect found in our experiments adds to the increasing evidence pointing out the functional similarities of verbal and nonverbal memory (Avons, 1998;Avons & Masson, 1999;Farrand & Jones, 1996;Jones et al, 1995), insofar as recency for visuospatial items was affected by a suffix of the same modality.…”

“…In the verbal domain, when the suffix differs from the TBR on some perceptual dimension, the effect of that suffix is attenuated. For example, Morton, Crowder, and Prussin (1971) showed that a change of voice or spatial location between the TBR items and the suffix reduces the suffix effect (see also Balota & Engle, 1981;Crowder & Morton, 1969;LeCompte & Watkins, 1995;Watkins & Watkins, 1980). These studies suggest that a perceptual change reduces the disruptive potency of the suffix.…”

“…Since the earliest demonstrations of the suffix effect, it has been widely investigated (e.g., Baddeley & Hull, 1979;Balota & Engle, 1981;Beaman & Morton, 2000;Crowder & Morton, 1969;Greene, 1992;Greene & Crowder, 1988;Nicholls & Jones, 2002;Penney, 1985). Contemporary studies have shown that not only is marked recency not confined to the auditory verbal domain, it is also observed with visuoverbal material such as lipread lists (Campbell & Dodd, 1982;Divin, Coyle, & James, 2001;Gathercole, 1987) and, significantly, with visual nonverbal material, such as the position of objects in twodimensional space (e.g., Avons, 1998;Jones, Farrand, Stuart, & Morris, 1995), or even with auditory spatial stimuli (Parmentier & Jones, 2000).…”

Within-category discriminations in speech perception

“…Crowder and Morton (1969) presented evidence for a precategorical acoustic store (PAS) which could retain acoustic information for as long as 2 sec. In further experiments, however, Crowder (1971Crowder ( , 1973 found that stop consonants were not well retained in PAS.…”

Perceptual learning of noise vocoded words: Effects of feedback and lexicality.

“…Whereas comprehensible, clear speech has a rich linguistic structure and can be easily retained in auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM), distorted speech is less comprehensible and thus cannot engage verbal STM processes as effectively. Listeners are therefore likely to rely more on an auditory echoic store (Crowder & Morton, 1969) to retain poorly comprehended, distorted sentences without additional support from phonological or lexical representations. Reliance on an auditory echoic store might prevent effective comparisons between distorted sentences and subsequently presented clear feedback presentations as the intervening several seconds of speech would overwrite auditory echoic representations.…”