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Updated: Apr 4, 2026

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions
Published on: July 16, 2015
No evidence of relation between working memory and perception of interrupted speech in young adults
Naveen K Nagaraj1, Andrea N Knapp1
1Cognitive Hearing Science Lab, Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Arkansas at Little Rock/University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, 2801 South University Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas 72204, USA nknagaraj@uams.edu, anknapp@uams.edu.
Abstract:
Understanding interrupted speech requires top-down linguistic and cognitive restoration mechanisms. To investigate the relation between working memory (WM) and perception of interrupted speech, 20 young adults were asked to recognize sentences interrupted at 2 Hz, 8 Hz, and a combination of 2 and 8 Hz. WM was measured using automated reading and operation span tasks. Interestingly, the results presented here revealed no statistical relation between any of the interrupted speech recognition scores and WM scores. This finding is in agreement with previous findings that suggest greater reliance on linguistic factors relative to cognitive factors during perception of interrupted speech.
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