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How lexical is the lexicon? Evidence for integrated auditory memory representations
April Pufahl1, Arthur G Samuel2
1Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicholls Road, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500, USA.
Cognitive Psychology
|February 1, 2014
Summary
Even irrelevant background sounds are remembered and aid speech perception. This suggests memory for speech includes more than just linguistic and indexical information, challenging previous models.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Auditory Perception
- Speech Processing
Background:
- Lexical representations traditionally include linguistic and indexical information.
- Previous models may not fully account for memory's role in speech perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if unattended environmental sounds influence speech perception.
- To determine the extent to which memory representations for speech incorporate non-linguistic auditory information.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed an animate/inanimate decision task on spoken words paired with environmental sounds.
- Speech perception was tested using filtered words after exposure to different voice or sound conditions.
- The roles of words and environmental sounds were reversed in some experiments.
Main Results:
- Speech perception was impaired by changes in either the voice or the accompanying environmental sound.
- Similar impairment occurred when words and environmental sounds swapped roles, indicating robust memory effects.
- Repetition of sounds or words did not yield performance benefits.
Conclusions:
- Memory representations for speech may integrate diverse auditory information, including irrelevant background sounds.
- Results support two theoretical models: either integrated memory representations or implicit memory effects separate from the lexicon.
- Further research is needed to distinguish between integrated lexical memory and non-lexical implicit memory for auditory events.
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