Errors in speech and short-term memory: The effects of phonemic similarity and syllable position

Abstract

Three experiments are reported which compare phonemic speech errors with phonemic order errors in short-term memory. Experiment 1 demonstrates the influence of feature similarity on consonant transpositions and also shows that consonant transpositions are more frequent than vowel transpositions which are in turn more frequent than syllable transpositions. Experiment 2 shows that similarity of the accompanying vowel affects the probability of consonant exchange, while Experiment 3 shows an effect of syllable position on consonant and vowel transpositions. These results are taken as support for the contention that phonemic speech and short-term memory errors arise at a common locus in the information-processing system.