The effects of auditory shadowing on recognition of information received visually

Abstract

When Ss attend to one auditory message, they have no permanent memory for a second auditory message received simultaneously. Generally, it has been argued that a similar effect would occur crossmodally. This hypothesis was tested in the present experiment for messages presented to visual and auditory modalities. All Ss were tested for recognition of information presented either while shadowing or while hearing but not shadowing a passage of prose presented to one ear. One group heard a list of concrete nouns in their other ear. Three other groups received (1) printed words, (2) pictures of objects easily labeled, or (3) pictures of objects difficult to label. The shadowing task produced a decrement in recognition scores for the first three groups but not for the group receiving pictures of objects difficult to label. Further, the shadowing task interfered more with information received auditorily than with any form of visual information. These results suggest that information received visually is stored in a long-term modality-specific memory that may operate independently of the auditory modality.

Visuo-spatial Working Memory

“…This chapter, in its reporting of the possible form the VSSP may take, has assumed that the results of the experiments reported here, and by others elsewhere (Rollins and Thibadeau, 1973;Salthouse, 19711; involving the selective interference phenomenon, support the existence of independent verbal and visuo-spatial information processing systems. It has also been suggested by Salthouse (1975) that there is an anatomical basis for such an argument in the distinction between the two cerebral hemispheres since many investigators (e.g., Gazzanga, 1970;Kimura, 1973;Newcombe, 1969) have reported that the right hemisphere is apparently specialised for processing spatial information, while the left is specialised for handling verbal information.…”

The Effect of SPAM Administration During a Dynamic Simulation

“…In a SPAM condition, performance during the use of SPAM probes was observed. In an auditory-shadowing condition, participants heard and immediately orally repeated words (e.g., Rollins & Thibadeu, 1973). Since the cognitive demands of auditory shadowing are minimal, performance costs shared between this condition and SPAM may plausibly be attributable to the actions involved in the probe methodology itself.…”

Is visual attention required for robust picture memory?

“…Since we were particularly interested in the role of visual selective attention, as opposed to more central attentional limitations, the concurrent task could be either a visual search task or an auditory detection task. Previous research has shown that auditory shadowing can interfere with picture memory (Allport, Antonis, & Reynolds, 1972;Rollins & Thibadeau, 1973;Rowe & Rogers, 1975). The comparison between the visual dual-task and the auditory dual-task allows us to determine if diverting visual selective attention has an effect that is greater than general dual-task cost.…”