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Phonological similarity effect is abolished by a silent mouthing task
1Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, Kyoto University, Japan.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
|April 1, 1993
Summary
Silent mouthing eliminated the phonological similarity effect in memory recall tasks. This suggests that articulatory suppression interferes with the phonological loop component of working memory.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Experimental Psychology
Background:
- The phonological similarity effect describes how recalling similar-sounding items is harder than recalling dissimilar ones.
- Working memory models propose a phonological loop for processing auditory and verbal information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how silent mouthing affects the phonological similarity effect.
- To test the role of the phonological loop in working memory.
Main Methods:
- 16 undergraduates participated in a serial recall task.
- Visually presented letter sequences were either phonologically similar or dissimilar.
- Participants completed a control condition and a silent mouthing condition (articulating irrelevant words silently).
Main Results:
- A significant phonological similarity effect was observed in the control condition.
- This effect disappeared in the silent mouthing condition, indicating recall of similar and dissimilar sequences was equally difficult.
- Silent mouthing acted as an articulatory suppression technique.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the working memory model, specifically the function of the phonological loop.
- Articulatory suppression through silent mouthing disrupts the phonological coding necessary for the similarity effect.