Auditory recognition without identification

When visual recognition test items are unidentifiable--through fragmentation, for example--participants can discriminate between unidentifiable items that were presented recently and those that were not. The present study extends this recognition without identification phenomenon to the auditory modality. In several experiments, participants listened to words and were then presented with spoken recognition test items that were embedded in white noise. Participants attempted to identify each spoken word through the white noise, then rated the likelihood that the word was studied. Auditory recognition without identification was found: Participants discriminated between studied and unstudied words in the absence of an ability to identify them through white noise, even when the voice changed from male to female and when the study list was presented visually. The effect was also found when identification was hindered through the isolation of particular phonemes, suggesting that phoneme information may be present in memory traces for recently spoken words.