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Short-term memory of temporal information revisited
Daniel Bratzke1,2, Rolf Ulrich3
1University of Bremen, Hochschulring 18, 28359, Bremen, Germany. bratzke@uni-bremen.de.
Psychological Research
|April 30, 2020
Summary
Short-term memory for duration appears to be processed in a modality-specific manner. Auditory interference selectively impaired auditory duration discrimination, supporting modality-specific temporal representations in memory.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Auditory and Visual Perception
Background:
- Diverging evidence exists on whether temporal information in short-term memory is modality-specific or crossmodal.
- Previous studies' conflicting results may stem from task trade-offs between primary temporal discrimination and secondary interference tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the modality specificity of temporal information in short-term memory.
- To re-examine interference effects using optimized tasks to minimize task trade-offs.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed duration discrimination tasks (visual and auditory) alongside speeded color (visual) or pitch (auditory) change discrimination interference tasks.
- Interference tasks were designed to specifically assess potential trade-offs between primary and secondary task demands.
Main Results:
- An auditory interference task selectively impaired auditory duration discrimination.
- A visual interference task was found to be inefficient in causing interference.
- Performance on auditory duration discrimination was significantly worse when participants completed the auditory interference task.
Conclusions:
- The findings support a modality-specific account for the representation of temporal information in short-term memory.
- Auditory temporal information is processed and stored in a manner distinct from visual temporal information.
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