Abstract
Evidence suggests that there is a tendency to verbally recode visually-presented information, and that in some cases verbal recoding can boost memory performance. According to multi-component models of working memory, memory performance is increased because task-relevant information is simultaneously maintained in two codes. The possibility of dual encoding is problematic if the goal is to measure capacity for visual information exclusively. To counteract this possibility, articulatory suppression is frequently used with visual change detection tasks specifically to prevent verbalization of visual stimuli. But is this precaution always necessary? There is little reason to believe that concurrent articulation affects performance in typical visual change detection tasks, suggesting that verbal recoding might not be likely to occur in this paradigm, and if not, precautionary articulatory suppression would not always be necessary. We present evidence confirming that articulatory suppression has no discernible effect on performance in a typical visual change-detection task in which abstract patterns are briefly presented. A comprehensive analysis using both descriptive statistics and Bayesian state-trace analysis revealed no evidence for any complex relationship between articulatory suppression and performance that would be consistent with a verbal recoding explanation. Instead, the evidence favors the simpler explanation that verbal strategies were either not deployed in the task or, if they were, were not effective in improving performance, and thus have no influence on visual working memory as measured during visual change detection. We conclude that in visual change detection experiments in which abstract visual stimuli are briefly presented, pre-cautionary articulatory suppression is unnecessary.
Highlights
During his seminal experiments on human memory, Sperling noticed that many of his participants verbalized and repeated to-be-remembered material during retention, even if the studied material was not aurally presented. Sperling (1967) pointed out that visual information can be verbalized and many people reported doing so
This reflection confirmed intuitions that regardless of presentation modality, information may be encoded with some flexibility of representation: visual materials might be maintained in a verbal code, and imagery corresponding to verbal input may likewise become active
In order to discern between small effects of articulation and the null hypothesis of no effect at all, we employ two modes of analysis: first, we provide a straightforward analysis based on descriptive statistics that shows that the effects tend to go in the reverse direction to what is predicted, ruling out evidence for the predicted effect; and second, we employed Bayesian state-trace analysis to show that participants show data patterns more consistent with a single-parameter explanation than a more complicated explanation
Summary
During his seminal experiments on human memory, Sperling noticed that many of his participants verbalized and repeated to-be-remembered material during retention, even if the studied material was not aurally presented. Sperling (1967) pointed out that visual information can be verbalized and many people reported doing so. The use of precautionary articulatory suppression is common practice despite evidence that articulatory suppression has not been shown to have a measurable effect on some visual change detection tasks (Luria, Sessa, Gotler, Jolicoeur, & Dell’Acqua, 2010; Mate, Allen, & Baques, 2012; Morey & Cowan, 2004, 2005), nor have small verbal memory loads (Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2001) These studies imply that the precaution of employing articulatory suppression may be unnecessary: participants performed no better without articulatory suppression than with it, suggesting that verbal recoding is not the default strategy for visual change detection tasks as typically administered. If a strong case could be made that possible verbal recoding of visual memoranda does not affect visual memory performance, researchers would be free to forgo including articulatory suppression from some designs
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