Distinctive features for short-term memory of consonants in noise

Wickelgren's (1966) short-term memory paradigm was used to investigate distinctive features of consonants in noise; 18 English consonants paired with the vowel /a/ were presented to 3 normal listeners in a CV context. Ss were tested in a quiet sound field at most comfortable listening level in experimental conditions of (1) quiet, (2) speech and noise at 0, (3) --5, and (4) --10 db S/N. Errors in auditory perception were eliminated from the data analysis and only errors in short-term memory recall were used as input to INDSCAL analysis. Results revealed that few errors were made in the quiet condition, but that all the noise conditions had deleterious effects on features.