Abstract
BackgroundWorking memory refers to the cognitive system responsible for the temporary storage and maintenance of information, but it remains controversial whether overlapping processes underlie the temporary retention of verbal and musical information such as words and tones.MethodsParticipants with little or no musical training (n = 22) and professional musicians (n = 21) were administered four memory tasks. Two tasks (tone sequence recognition and pseudoword sequence recall) aimed at comparing groups’ performance for tonal or phonological material separately. Other two memory tasks investigated pseudoword and tone recognition under three conditions during the retention interval (silence, irrelevant words, or irrelevant tones).ResultsMusicians were better than nonmusicians in tone sequence recognition but not in pseudoword sequence recall. There were no interference effects of irrelevant tones or words on pseudoword recognition, and only irrelevant tones significantly interfered with tone recognition.ConclusionsOur results offer further support that tone recognition is specifically impaired by irrelevant tones, but irrelevant words did not disrupt pseudoword or tone recognition. Although these results do not reflect a double-dissociation pattern between phonological and tonal working memory, they provide evidence that temporary retention of tonal information is subject to specific tonal interference, indicating that working memory for tones involves specific processes.
Highlights
Working memory refers to the cognitive system responsible for the temporary storage and maintenance of information, but it remains controversial whether overlapping processes underlie the temporary retention of verbal and musical information such as words and tones
Some authors had initially claimed that memory for tones requires specific processes (Berz, 1995; Deutsch, 1970), tonal memory seems to be linked to musical expertise and a clear
Our results indicated that tone recognition was impaired by irrelevant tones for both groups of participants and that pseudoword recognition was not disrupted either by irrelevant words or tones
Summary
Working memory refers to the cognitive system responsible for the temporary storage and maintenance of information, but it remains controversial whether overlapping processes underlie the temporary retention of verbal and musical information such as words and tones. We investigated recognition memory for phonological and tonal stimuli under different conditions of distracting stimuli (irrelevant words or tones) Research on this topic typically requires the serial recall of visually presented linguistic items that are studied in a silent condition or with the simultaneous presentation of Defilippi et al Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica (2019) 32:2 irrelevant sounds (tones, speech, vocal, or instrumental music) that the participants are instructed to ignore. Phonological WM is impaired by tones, vocal, and instrumental music (Alley & Greene, 2008; Iwanaga & Ito, 2002; Jones & Macken, 1993, 1995; Salamé & Baddeley, 1989)
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