C. Philip Beaman

The irrelevant sound phenomenon revisited: what role for working memory capacity?

High-span individuals (as measured by the operation span [OSPAN] technique) are less likely than low-span individuals to notice their own names in an unattended auditory stream (A. R. A. Conway, N. Cowan, & M. F. Bunting, 2001). The possibility that OSPAN accounts for individual differences in auditory distraction on an immediate recall test was examined. There was no evidence that high-OSPAN participants were more resistant to the disruption caused by irrelevant speech in serial or in free recall. Low-OSPAN participants did, however, make more semantically related intrusion errors from the irrelevant sound stream in a free recall test (Experiment 4). Results suggest that OSPAN mediates semantic components of auditory distraction dissociable from other aspects of the irrelevant sound effect.

The separate but related origins of the recency effect and the modality effect in free recall

The recency effect found in free recall can be accounted for almost entirely in terms of the recall of ordered sequences of items. It is such sequences, presented at the end of the stimulus list but recalled at the very beginning of the response protocol, which produce a recency effect. Such sequences are recalled at the beginning of the response protocol equally often following auditory and visual presentation. These same stimulus sequences are also frequently recalled other than initially in the response protocol following auditory presentation. However, such responses are rarely found following visual presentation. The modality effect in free recall, the advantage of auditory over visual presentation, can be substantially accounted for in these terms. Theoretical and procedural implications of these data are discussed.

Inverting the modality effect in serial recall

Differences in recall ability between immediate serial recall of auditorily and visually presented verbal material have traditionally been considered restricted to the end of to-be-recalled lists, the recency section of the serial position curve (e.g., Crowder & Morton, 1969). Later studies showed that—under certain circumstances–differences in recall between the two modalities can be observed across the whole of the list (Frankish, 1985). However in all these studies the advantage observed is for recall of material presented in the auditorily modality. Six separate conditions across four experiments demonstrate that a visual advantage can be obtained with serial recall if participants are required to recall the list in two distinct sections using serial recall. Judged on a list-wide basis, the visual advantage is of equivalent size to the auditory advantage of the classical modality effect. The results demonstrate that differences in representation of auditory and visual verbal material in short-term memory persist beyond lexical and phonological categorization and are problematic for current theories of the modality effect.

Inhibitory control in memory: Evidence for negative priming in free recall

Cognitive control mechanisms--such as inhibition--decrease the likelihood that goal-directed activity is ceded to irrelevant events. Here, we use the action of auditory distraction to show how retrieval from episodic long-term memory is affected by competitor inhibition. Typically, a sequence of to-be-ignored spoken distracters drawn from the same semantic category as a list of visually presented to-be-recalled items impairs free recall performance. In line with competitor inhibition theory (Anderson, 2003), free recall was worse for items on a probe trial if they were a repeat of distracter items presented during the previous, prime, trial (Experiment 1). This effect was produced only when the distracters were dominant members of the same category as the to-be-recalled items on the prime. For prime trials in which distracters were low-dominant members of the to-be-remembered item category or were unrelated to that category--and hence not strong competitors for retrieval--positive priming was found (Experiments 2 and 3). These results are discussed in terms of inhibitory approaches to negative priming and memory retrieval.

A little learning is a dangerous thing: an experimental demonstration of ignorance-driven inference.

Studies of ignorance-driven decision making have been employed to analyse when ignorance should prove advantageous on theoretical grounds or else they have been employed to examine whether human behaviour is consistent with an ignorance-driven inference strategy (e.g., the recognition heuristic). In the current study we examine whether—under conditions where such inferences might be expected—the advantages that theoretical analyses predict are evident in human performance data. A single experiment shows that, when asked to make relative wealth judgements, participants reliably use recognition as a basis for their judgements. Their wealth judgements under these conditions are reliably more accurate when some of the target names are unknown than when participants recognize all of the names (a “less-is-more effect”). These results are consistent across a number of variations: the number of options given to participants and the nature of the wealth judgement. A basic model of recognition-based inference predicts these effects.

Modeling distributions of immediate memory effects: no strategies needed?

Many models of immediate memory predict the presence or absence of various effects, but none have been tested to see whether they predict an appropriate distribution of effect sizes. The authors show that the feature model (J. S. Nairne, 1990) produces appropriate distributions of effect sizes for both the phonological confusion effect and the word-length effect. The model produces the appropriate number of reversals, when participants are more accurate with similar items or long items, and also correctly predicts that participants performing less well overall demonstrate smaller and less reliable phonological similarity and word-length effects and are more likely to show reversals. These patterns appear within the model without the need to assume a change in encoding or rehearsal strategy or the deployment of a different storage buffer. The implications of these results and the wider applicability of the distributionmodeling approach are discussed.

Input and output modality effects in immediate serial recall

In immediate recall tasks, visual recency is substantially enhanced when output interference is low (Cowan, Saults, Elliott, & Moreno, 2002; Craik, 1969) whereas auditory recency remains high even under conditions of high output interference. This auditory advantage has been interpreted in terms of auditory resistance to output interference (e.g., Neath & Surprenant, 2003). In this study the auditory-visual difference at low output interference re-emerged when ceiling effects were accounted for, but only with spoken output. With written responding the auditory advantage remained significantly larger with high than with low output interference. These new data suggest that both superior auditory encoding and modality-specific output interference contribute to the classic auditory-visual modality effect.

Distraction control processes in free recall: Benefits and costs to performance

How is semantic memory influenced by individual differences under conditions of distraction? This question was addressed by observing how participants recalled visual target words--drawn from a single category--while ignoring spoken distractor words that were members of either the same or a different (single) category. Working memory capacity (WMC) was related to disruption only with synchronous, not asynchronous, presentation, and distraction was greater when the words were presented synchronously. Subsequent experiments found greater negative priming of distractors among individuals with higher WMC, but this may be dependent on targets and distractors being comparable category exemplars. With less dominant category members as distractors, target recall was impaired--relative to control--only among individuals with low WMC. The results highlight the role of cognitive control resources in target-distractor selection and the individual-specific cost implications of such cognitive control.

Working memory and working attention: What could possibly evolve?

The concept of “working” memory is traceable back to nineteenth‐century theorists, but the term itself was not used until the mid‐twentieth century. A variety of different explanatory constructs have since evolved that all make use of the working‐memory label. This history is briefly reviewed, and alternative formulations of working memory (as language processor, executive attention, and global work space) are considered as potential mechanisms for cognitive change within and between individuals and between species. A means, derived from the literature on human problem solving, of tracing memory and computational demands across a single task is described and applied to two specific examples of tool use by chimpanzees and early hominids. The examples show how specific proposals for necessary and/or sufficient computational and memory requirements can be more rigorously assessed on a task‐by‐task basis. General difficulties in connecting cognitive theories (arising from the observed capabilities of individuals deprived of material support) with archaeological data (primarily remnants of material culture) are discussed.

The effects of distraction on metacognition and metacognition on distraction: evidence from recognition memory.

The effects of auditory distraction in memory tasks have, to date, been examined with procedures that minimize participants’ control over their own memory processes. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to metacognitive control factors which might affect memory performance. In this study, we investigate the effects of auditory distraction on metacognitive control of memory, examining the effects of auditory distraction in recognition tasks utilizing the metacognitive framework of Koriat and Goldsmith (1996), to determine whether strategic regulation of memory accuracy is impacted by auditory distraction. Results replicated previous findings in showing that auditory distraction impairs memory performance in tasks minimizing participants’ metacognitive control (forced-report test). However, the results revealed also that when metacognitive control is allowed (free-report tests), auditory distraction impacts upon a range of metacognitive indices. In the present study, auditory distraction undermined accuracy of metacognitive monitoring (resolution), reduced confidence in responses provided and, correspondingly, increased participants’ propensity to withhold responses in free-report recognition. Crucially, changes in metacognitive processes were related to impairment in free-report recognition performance, as the use of the “don’t know” option under distraction led to a reduction in the number of correct responses volunteered in free-report tests. Overall, the present results show how auditory distraction exerts its influence on memory performance via both memory and metamemory processes.