Auditory encoding in visual short-term recall: effects of noise intensity and spatial location

Abstract

According to the primary memory masking hypothesis, speech noise increases serial recall errors made on visually presented lists because the list items are recoded and stored as auditory memory representations which are masked by the noise. In four experiments, both the spatial location of speech noise and its intensity were systematically varied to determine how they influenced recall. The results were consistent with the assumption that primary memory masking takes place in the preperceptual auditory store, which has been inferred from backward recognition masking studies, but were inconsistent with the assumption that primary memory masking takes place in the precategorical acoustic store, which has been inferred from modality and suffix studies.