The sandwich effect: The role of attentional factors in serial recall.

Abstract

Five experiments tested the prediction, from a simple chaining model, that interleaving irrelevant material will substantially disrupt immediate serial recall. Experiment 1 interpolated long or short words between items in an auditory digit span test. These two "sandwich" conditions disrupted recall to an equal but moderate extent. Experiment 2 presented mixed lists of digits and words, cuing one or the other before or after presentation. Precuing led to substantially better recall. Experiment 3 used articulatory suppression to rule out the hypothesis that recall was protected from the sandwich effect by subvocal rehearsal. Experiment 4 combined the sandwich effect with a concurrent task, finding clear effects of both but no interaction. Experiment 5 showed that the predictability of interpolated material did not influence recall. These results can be explained by adding an attentional preprocessor to standard chaining models.

Rats’ memory for serially presented flavors: Effects of interstimulus interval and generalization decrement

“…To the extent that subjects remember previously having been exposed to a flavor, the subjects should drink more of that flavor when it is again presented to them. The serial presentation ofa list of items results, typically, in better memory for the items occupying the initial and terminal portions ofthe list than for those items occupying the central positions in the list (Baddeley, Papagno, & Andrade, 1993;Glazner & Cunitz, 1966). These effects are termed primacy and recency, respectively.…”

The sandwich effect reassessed: Effects of streaming, distraction, and modality

“…Baddeley et al (1993, Experiment 5), although finding a sandwich effect of modest size, found no difference in span between repeated (repeated letter) and changing conditions (letters selected from the alphabet). One possibility is that, as a side effect of the span method adopted by Baddeley et al (1993), the number of irrelevant items presented to participants was small, making the deliberate selective processing of the to-beremembered sequence a relatively simple task; at the same time, the number of irrelevant items was small compared with that in a typical irrelevant sound experiment. Both factors are likely to have reduced the likelihood of obtaining effects.…”

“…Both factors are likely to have reduced the likelihood of obtaining effects. In the study of Baddeley et al (1993), digit-span was about five items, which means that for those conditions in which a sandwich was present, only six irrelevant items were presented in all. An established feature of the irrelevant sound effect is that the degree of disruption is proportional to the number of tokens in the irrelevant sequence: the token-dose effect (Bridges & Jones, 1996).…”

“…Baddeley et al (1993) used a span method: Participants were given three trials with lists beginning at two digits and increasing by one every third trial, span being calculated as "the The degree of disruption from interleaving auditory irrelevant items within a sequence of tobe-remembereditems-the sandwich effect-was examined in two experiments. Previous demonstrations of the effecthave shown that the penalty for interleaving items is small and that changing irrelevanttokens is no more damaging than repeating ones (contrary to the classic changing state effect of irrelevant sound).…”

The phonological loop model of working memory: An ERP study of irrelevant speech and phonological similarity effects

“…The idea that our design might have induced a "sandwhich effect" (Baddeley, Papagno, & Andrade, 1993) instead of irrelevant speech, by interpolating irrelevant speech between relevant material, can be discarded. We found significant differences between Conditions I and 2, which differ in the degree of variability of irrelevant material and in the degree of phonological similarity between targets and nontargets-precisely the two variables that, according to either Baddeley's or Jones's model, explain the irrelevant speech effect, but to which the sandwhich effect is insensitive .…”