PSYCH 140M Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Psych
Document Summary
Exposure to speech sounds (even irrelevant speech sounds like nonsense syllables or foreign words) impairs subjects" memory for visually- presented lists of digits. Occurs even when subjects are instructed to ignore the speech. Speech automatically enters the phonological store, even without paying attention to it. This speech ends up adding noise to the phonological memory trace of the list items being rehearsed, making it more difficult to accurately recall list items. Subjects were asked to remember the point along a line at which a circle appeared (presented for 1 second). For varying periods of time between presentation of the stimulus and attempt to recall, subjects would perform an intervening (non-spatial, non- visual) task. Subjects were asked to recall locations of circles after 0 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec, and 20 sec. The intervening tasks were of varying difficulties, as determined by previous studies (in order of difficulty): Recording digit pairs onto a sheet of paper.
