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Evidence for a modality effect in sentence retention.

Ralf Rummer1, Judith Schweppe

  • 1Saarland University, Department of Psychology, Saarbrücken, Germany. r.rummer@rz.uni-sb.de

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|April 18, 2006
PubMed
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Acoustic-sensory codes aid memory for words, and this study shows they also help in recalling sentences. Even when focusing on meaning, the sound of words aids sentence memory.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Linguistics
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Phonological information and acoustic-sensory codes are known to support memory for unrelated word lists.
  • Short-term sentence recall is typically associated with propositional and lexicosemantic information, thought to be modality-independent.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if acoustic-sensory codes contribute to sentence retention.
  • To determine the role of acoustic-sensory information in sentence recall beyond propositional and lexicosemantic processing.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the intrusion paradigm developed by Potter and Lombardi (1990).
  • Manipulated the availability of acoustic-sensory information by having participants read sentences silently, aloud, or silently mouthing the words.
  • Compared recall performance across conditions with varying levels of acoustic-sensory and articulatory information.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Data indicate that acoustic-sensory information is utilized during sentence recall when it is available.
  • The findings suggest that the modality of presentation (auditory vs. silent reading) influences the memory code used for sentences.

Conclusions:

  • Acoustic-sensory information plays a role in sentence retention, even when meaning-based codes are presumed dominant.
  • The study provides evidence for the contribution of phonological or acoustic traces to short-term memory for sentences.