Modality effects in sentence recall

The authors examined the intrusion of lures into sentence recall when manipulating the modality of distractor-word lists and sentences separately. Participants received a list of words followed by a sentence, and the list did or did not contain a lure related to a target in the sentence. Conceptual regeneration of the sentence during recall predicted higher lure intrusions than spontaneous intrusions in all conditions. However, if surface information is remembered, the modality of sentence and list should influence intrusions. The results from Experiment 1 showed that both factors are important, as intrusions were always higher when lures were contained in the distractor-word list and when visual, rather than auditory, sentences were recalled. The authors also found distractor modality to influence the results. In Experiment 2, when interference from the word probe was reduced by removing 40% of the word probes, the disruptive effect of the auditory distractors was attenuated on the trials without the word probe. Also, the authors found lure intrusions to be dependent on the presence of the word probe.