Covert Rehearsal Research Articles

Inter-individual variability (but intra-individual stability) of overt versus covert rehearsal strategies in a digital Corsi task.

The Corsi (block-tapping) paradigm is a classic and well-established visuospatial working memory task in humans involving internal computations (memorizing of item sequences, organizing and updating the memorandum, and recall processes), as well as both overt and covert shifts of attention to facilitate rehearsal, serving to maintain the Corsi sequences during the retention phase. Here, we introduce a novel digital version of a Corsi task in which i) the difficulty of the memorandum (using sequence lengths ranging from 3 to 8) was controlled, ii) the execution of overt and/or covert attention as well as the visuospatial working memory load during the retention phase was manipulated, and iii) shifts of attention were quantified in all experimental phases. With this, we present behavioral data that demonstrate, characterize, and classify the individual effects of overt and covert strategies used as a means of encoding and rehearsal. In a full within-subject design, we tested 28 participants who had to solve three different Corsi conditions. While in condition A neither of the two strategies were restricted, in condition B the overt and in condition C the overt as well as the covert strategies were suppressed. Analyzing Corsi span, (eye) exploration index, and pupil size (change), data clearly show a continuum between overt and covert strategies over all participants (indicating inter-individual variability). Further, all participants showed stable strategy choice (indicating intra-individual stability), meaning that the preferred strategy was maintained in all three conditions, phases, and sequence lengths of the experiment.

A symbolic interactionist model of interpreter-facilitated communication—Key communication issues in face-to-face interpreting

Communication has been conceptualized and studied in a wide range of disciplines. However, very few communication theories or models have explicitly incorporated interpreting as an indispensable process to achieve communicative goals in intercultural and interlinguistic settings where communicative parties do not share a common language. By the same token, despite a strong emphasis of interpreting as “a communicative pas de trois”, there is much remaining to be explored in how existing communication theories and models could be drawn on and adapted to shed light on the key communication issues in interpreting studies. In view of such a distinct gap attributed to a striking lack of attention from both communication and interpreting scholars, as highlighted in this special issue, the author develops a symbolic interactionist model of interpreter-facilitated communication with a focus on exploring how an interpreter's identification with self-meanings and role management, which is key to their intrapersonal covert rehearsal process, impact on their interpreting decisions and behaviors. Through one-to-one interviews with three professional interpreters from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, it is found that the interpreters' identification with particular self-meanings at the intrapersonal level, which gives rise to identity integration, identity accumulation and disidentification strategies, has impacted on how they managed various challenges at the interpersonal level, such as the impossibility of the neutrality expectation, dealing with inappropriate non-interpreting demands from communicative parties, and resolving identity conflicts linked to communicative contexts.

The Effect of Covert Rehearsal Model Towards Students’ Pronunciation Ability

<p class="Afiliasi">This research aims to find the effect of Covert Rehearsal Model on students’ pronunciation at second grade IPS of MAN 3 Pasaman Barat. The research was conducted at MAN 3 Pasaman Barat because most of the students still experience obstacles in mastering English, especially in pronunciation. Most students find it difficult to pronounce and distinguish the same sounds with different meaning, and the strategies used by the teacher are always the same. In teaching pronunciation, the teacher only asks the students to repeat the spoken word after her. The fact is the students were not provided with the right model. This research uses experimental research. It is a quasi-experimental design by using the non-equivalent control group. The population of this reseach is 73 students. To determine the sample, the researcher uses purposive sampling technique. The researcher chose the class XI IPS 1 and XI IPS 3 as the sample of this research. Class XI IPS 1 was treated as Experiment class which was taught by using Covert Rehearsal Model and XI IPS 3 was treated as Control class which was taught by using conventional techniques. The data get through pre-test and post-test to experimental and control classes. To analyze the data, the researcher used the normality and homogeneity tests by using SPSS 22 application. To test the hypothesis, the researcher uses t-test formula and consulted the result into a t - table with level of significant α= 0.05. From the result of the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental class, the results of the t-test (5.283) are higher than the t-table (2.093). So the alternative Hypothesis (Ha) was accepted which means that there was a significant effect of using the effect of Covert Rehearsal Model Strategy towards students’ Pronunciation. Then, the final calculation of the two classes: experimental and control classes obtained that the t-count is greater than the t-table (50.75>49.86) so that the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted which means that there is a significant difference between the use of the Covert Rehearsal Model with conventional techniques. Finally, it can be concluded that the Covert Rehearsal Model strategy have a significant effect on students' pronunciation abilities.</p><p><em>Peneliti ini bertujuan untuk menemukan pengaruh penggunaan Covert Rehearsal Model</em><em> </em><em>terhadap </em><em>p</em><em>ronunciation siswa kelas XI IPS MAN 3 Pasaman Barat. P</em><em>enelitian</em><em> ini dilakukan di MAN 3 Pasaman Barat karena sebagian besar siswa masih mengalami kendala dalam penguasaan Bahasa Inggris terutama pada </em><em>p</em><em>ronunciation. Sebagian besar siswa sulit melafalkan dan membedakan bunyi yang sama, dengan perbedaan makna yang sama, dan strategy yang di gunakan guru dalam mengajar selalu sama. Dalam mengajarkan pronunciation, g</em><em>uru</em><em> </em><em>hanya meminta siswa mengulang kata </em><em>yang diucapkan setelahnya.</em><em> </em><em>Fakta</em><em>nya siswa tidak </em><em>di</em><em>berikan model yang tepat</em><em> untuk meningkatkan kemampuan pronunciation</em><em>. </em><em>Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah penelitian eksperimen. Peneliti menggunakan penelitian quasi eksperimen dengan menggunakan model non-equivalent. Populasi dari penelitian ini adalah 73 siswa. Peneliti menggunakan teknik purposive sampel untuk menentukan sampel penelitian ini. Peneliti memilih kelas kelas XI.IPS 1 dan kelas XI.IPS 3 di MAN 3 Pasaman Barat sebagai sample dari penelitian ini. Untuk kelas XI.IPS 3 diperlakukan sebagai kelas eksperimen yang di ajar dengan menggunakan strategi Covert Rehearsal Model. Sedangkan kelas XI. IPS 1 diperlakukan sebagai kelas kontrol yang di ajarkan dengan menggunakan teknik yang biasa. Data diperoleh melalui pre-tes dan post-tes untuk kelas control dan kelas eksperimen. Untuk menganalisis data, peneliti menggunakan tes normalitas dan homogenitas dengan menggunakan aplikasi SPSS 22. Sedangkan untuk menguji hypothesis, peneliti menggunakan uji-t dan mengkonsultasikan hasilnya dengan tabel t untuk hipotesis pertama kedua.Dari hasil perhitungan pre-tes dan post-tes dari kelas eksperimen terdapat hasil uji t-hitung (5,283) lebih tinggi dari pada t-tabel (2,093). Jadi hipotesis alternatif (Ha) diterima yang maknanya bahwa ada pengaruh yang signifikan dengan menggunakan strategi Covert Rehearsal Model</em><em>.</em><em> </em><em>K</em><em>emudia</em><em>n</em><em>, perhitungan akhir dari kedua kelas: kelas eksperimen dan kontrol diperoleh t-hitung lebih besar dari pada t-tabel (50,75>49,86) sehingga hipotesis alternatif (Ha) diterima yang maknanya bahwa ada perbedaan yang signifikan antara penggunaan strategi Covert Rehearsal Model dengan teknik konvensional. Akhirnya dapat disimpulkan bahwa strategi Covert Rehearsal Model</em><em> </em><em>dapat memberikan efek yang signifikan terhadap kemampuan Pronunciation siswa.</em></p>

A comparison and classification of oscillatory characteristics in speech perception and covert speech

Covert speech, the mental imagery of speaking, has been studied increasingly to understand and decode thoughts in the context of brain-computer interfaces. In studies of speech comprehension, neural oscillations are thought to play a key role in the temporal encoding of speech. However, little is known about the role of oscillations in covert speech. In this study, we investigated the oscillatory involvements in covert speech and speech perception. Data were collected from 10 participants with 64 channel EEG. Participants heard the words, ‘blue’ and ‘orange’, and subsequently mentally rehearsed them. First, continuous wavelet transform was performed on epoched signals and subsequently two-tailed t-tests between two classes (tasks) were conducted to determine statistical differences in frequency and time (t-CWT). In the current experiment, a task comprised speech perception or covert rehearsal of a word while a condition was the discrimination between tasks. Features were extracted using t-CWT and subsequently classified using a support vector machine. θ and γ phase amplitude coupling (PAC) was also assessed within tasks and across conditions between perception and covert activities (i.e. cross-task). All binary classifications accuracies (80–90%) significantly exceeded chance level, supporting the use of t-CWT in determining relative oscillatory involvements. While the perception condition dynamically invoked all frequencies with more prominent θ and α activity, the covert condition favoured higher frequencies with significantly higher γ activity than perception. Moreover, the perception condition produced significant θ-γ PAC, possibly corroborating a reported linkage between syllabic and phonemic sampling. Although this coupling was found to be suppressed in the covert condition, we found significant cross-task coupling between perception θ and covert speech γ. Covert speech processing appears to be largely associated with higher frequencies of EEG. Importantly, the significant cross-task coupling between speech perception and covert speech, in the absence of within-task covert speech PAC, seems to support the notion that the γ- and θ-bands reflect, respectively, shared and unique encoding processes across tasks.

Influences of cognitive load on sensorimotor contributions to working memory: An EEG investigation of mu rhythm activity during speech discrimination.

Sensorimotor activity during speech perception is highly variable and is thought to be related to the underlying cognitive processes recruited to meet task demands. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the impact of cognitive load on sensorimotor-based attention and working memory processes during speech perception. Manipulations of set size and signal clarity were employed to alter cognitive load. Raw EEG data recorded from 42 subjects during accurate discrimination of CV syllable pairs were decomposed by Independent component analysis; identifying sensorimotor mu components from 37 subjects. Time-frequency analyses revealed event related desynchronization (ERD) across alpha and beta frequency bands during and following stimulus presentation in all conditions, reflecting working memory maintenance through covert articulatory rehearsal. No early attentional activity was observed, suggesting adaptation to tasks. However, modulation of late working memory activity was observed between degraded and non-degraded conditions. Weak and delayed alpha and beta ERD in degraded conditions were interpreted as evidence of delayed implementation of covert rehearsal due to the prolonged time necessary to extract a phonological representation from the auditory signal. Findings are interpreted within Analysis by Synthesis to characterize the multi-faceted and temporally distinct contributions of anterior sensorimotor regions to working memory in support of speech discrimination.

Assessing the Impact of Pronunciation Learning Strategy on Kurdish EFL Learners’ Pronunciation Accuracy

The study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of pronunciation learning strategies (in favor of Covert Rehearsal Model) in helping Kurdish EFL learners to acquire accuracy in English pronunciation and detecting the most frequently used strategy types and strategy group by the learners. A total of 50 Kurdish EFL students of Salahaddin University, English Department took part in the study. The instruments used for collecting data and information included were a validated questionnaire of pronunciation learning strategies. The questionnaire items were adopted from the synthesized taxonomy of pronunciation strategies presented by O'Malley & Chamots’ (1990) and Oxford's (1990) and adapted according to Kurdish learners' need. The results indicated that the use of various pronunciation learning strategies were useful for Kurdish learners to improve their pronunciation skills and then consolidate their self-confidence to bring positive changes in students' pronunciation performance.

Effects of environmental support on overt and covert visuospatial rehearsal

ABSTRACTPeople can rehearse to-be-remembered locations either overtly, using eye movements, or covertly, using only shifts of spatial attention. The present study examined whether the effectiveness of these two strategies depends on environmental support for rehearsal. In Experiment 1, when environmental support (i.e., the array of possible locations) was present and participants could engage in overt rehearsal during retention intervals, longer intervals resulted in larger spans, whereas in Experiment 2, when support was present but participants could only engage in covert rehearsal, longer intervals resulted in smaller spans. When environmental support was absent, however, longer retention intervals resulted in smaller memory spans regardless of which rehearsal strategies were available. In Experiment 3, analyses of participants’ eye movements revealed that the presence of support increased participants’ fixations of to-be-remembered target locations more than fixations of non-targets, and that this was associated with better memory performance. Further, although the total time fixating targets increased, individual target fixations were actually briefer. Taken together, the present findings suggest that in the presence of environmental support, overt rehearsal is more effective than covert rehearsal at maintaining to-be-remembered locations in working memory, and that having more time for overt rehearsal can actually increase visuospatial memory spans.

Neural Population Dynamics Underlying Motor Learning Transfer

Covert motor learning can sometimes transfer to overt behavior. We investigated the neural mechanism underlying transfer by constructing a two-context paradigm. Subjects performed cursor movements either overtly using arm movements, or covertly via a brain-machine interface that moves the cursor based on motor cortical activity (in lieu of arm movement). These tasks helped evaluate whether and how cortical changes resulting from "covert rehearsal" affect overt performance. We found that covert learning indeed transfers to overt performance and is accompanied by systematic population-level changes in motor preparatory activity. Current models of motor cortical function ascribe motor preparation to achieving initial conditions favorable for subsequent movement-period neural dynamics. We found that covert and overt contexts share these initial conditions, and covert rehearsal manipulates them in a manner that persists across context changes, thus facilitating overt motor learning. This transfer learning mechanism might provide new insights into other covert processes like mental rehearsal.

Gaze-based rehearsal in children under 7: a developmental investigation of eye movements during a serial spatial memory task.

The emergence of strategic verbal rehearsal at around 7years of age is widely considered a major milestone in descriptions of the development of short-term memory across childhood. Likewise, rehearsal is believed by many to be a crucial factor in explaining why memory improves with age. This apparent qualitative shift in mnemonic processes has also been characterized as a shift from passive visual to more active verbal mnemonic strategy use, but no investigation of the development of overt spatial rehearsal has informed this explanation. We measured serial spatial order reconstruction in adults and groups of children 5-7years old and 8-11years old, while recording their eye movements. Children, particularly the youngest children, overtly fixated late-list spatial positions longer than adults, suggesting that younger children are less likely to engage in covert rehearsal during stimulus presentation than older children and adults. However, during retention the youngest children overtly fixated more of the to-be-remembered sequences than any other group, which is inconsistent with the idea that children do nothing to try to remember. Altogether, these data are inconsistent with the notion that children under 7 do not engage in any attempts to remember. They are most consistent with proposals that children's style of remembering shifts around age 7 from reactive cue-driven methods to proactive, covert methods, which may include cumulative rehearsal.

Two Distinct Auditory-Motor Circuits for Monitoring Speech Production as Revealed by Content-Specific Suppression of Auditory Cortex

Speech production, both overt and covert, down-regulates the activation of auditory cortex. This is thought to be due to forward prediction of the sensory consequences of speech, contributing to a feedback control mechanism for speech production. Critically, however, these regulatory effects should be specific to speech content to enable accurate speech monitoring. To determine the extent to which such forward prediction is content-specific, we recorded the brain's neuromagnetic responses to heard multisyllabic pseudowords during covert rehearsal in working memory, contrasted with a control task. The cortical auditory processing of target syllables was significantly suppressed during rehearsal compared with control, but only when they matched the rehearsed items. This critical specificity to speech content enables accurate speech monitoring by forward prediction, as proposed by current models of speech production. The one-to-one phonological motor-to-auditory mappings also appear to serve the maintenance of information in phonological working memory. Further findings of right-hemispheric suppression in the case of whole-item matches and left-hemispheric enhancement for last-syllable mismatches suggest that speech production is monitored by 2 auditory-motor circuits operating on different timescales: Finer grain in the left versus coarser grain in the right hemisphere. Taken together, our findings provide hemisphere-specific evidence of the interface between inner and heard speech.

Distinct processes shape flashbulb and event memories

In the present study, we examined the relation between memory for a consequential and emotional event and memory for the circumstances in which people learned about that event, known as flashbulb memory. We hypothesized that these two types of memory have different determinants and that event memory is not necessarily a direct causal determinant of flashbulb memory. Italian citizens (N = 352) described their memories of Italy’s victory in the 2006 Football World Cup Championship after a delay of 18 months. Structural equation modeling showed that flashbulb memory and event memory could be clearly differentiated and were determined by two separate pathways. In the first pathway, importance predicted emotional intensity, which, in turn, predicted the frequency of overt and covert rehearsal. Rehearsal was the only direct determinant of vivid and detailed flashbulb memories. In the second pathway, importance predicted rehearsal by media exposure, which enhanced the accuracy and certainty of event memory. Event memory was also enhanced by prior knowledge. These results have important implications for the debate concerning whether the formation of flashbulb memory and event memory involve different processes and for understanding how flashbulb memory can be simultaneously so vivid and so error-prone.

Neural Correlates of Sublexical Processing in Phonological Working Memory

This study investigated links between working memory and speech processing systems. We used delayed pseudoword repetition in fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of sublexical structure in phonological working memory (pWM). We orthogonally varied the number of syllables and consonant clusters in auditory pseudowords and measured the neural responses to these manipulations under conditions of covert rehearsal (Experiment 1). A left-dominant network of temporal and motor cortex showed increased activity for longer items, with motor cortex only showing greater activity concomitant with adding consonant clusters. An individual-differences analysis revealed a significant positive relationship between activity in the angular gyrus and the hippocampus, and accuracy on pseudoword repetition. As models of pWM stipulate that its neural correlates should be activated during both perception and production/rehearsal [Buchsbaum, B. R., & D'Esposito, M. The search for the phonological store: From loop to convolution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 762-778, 2008; Jacquemot, C., & Scott, S. K. What is the relationship between phonological short-term memory and speech processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 480-486, 2006; Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. Working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47-89). New York: Academic Press, 1974], we further assessed the effects of the two factors in a separate passive listening experiment (Experiment 2). In this experiment, the effect of the number of syllables was concentrated in posterior-medial regions of the supratemporal plane bilaterally, although there was no evidence of a significant response to added clusters. Taken together, the results identify the planum temporale as a key region in pWM; within this region, representations are likely to take the form of auditory or audiomotor "templates" or "chunks" at the level of the syllable [Papoutsi, M., de Zwart, J. A., Jansma, J. M., Pickering, M. J., Bednar, J. A., & Horwitz, B. From phonemes to articulatory codes: an fMRI study of the role of Broca's area in speech production. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 2156-2165, 2009; Warren, J. E., Wise, R. J. S., & Warren, J. D. Sounds do-able: auditory-motor transformations and the posterior temporal plane. Trends in Neurosciences, 28, 636-643, 2005; Griffiths, T. D., & Warren, J. D. The planum temporale as a computational hub. Trends in Neurosciences, 25, 348-353, 2002], whereas more lateral structures on the STG may deal with phonetic analysis of the auditory input [Hickok, G. The functional neuroanatomy of language. Physics of Life Reviews, 6, 121-143, 2009].

Pronunciation Pegs

An ESL instructor describes her experience of using pronunciation pegs, a method to foster the self-monitoring and self-correction of pronunciation mistakes with a view to helping university-level students deal with the ongoing challenge of producing target-like pronunciation. The appeal of pegs to students led the instructor to reflect on what makes adopting target pronunciation problematic, how pegs can be adapted to various learning styles, and how cultural differences can have an effect on the appreciation of pegs. Finally, the instructor sought a theoretical explanation for how pegs worked and found this in anchoring and covert rehearsal.

Functional activation in the cerebellum during working memory and simple speech tasks

Verbal working memory is the ability to temporarily store and manipulate verbal information. This study tested the predictions of a neuroanatomical model of how the cerebellum contributes to verbal working memory ( Desmond et al., 1997). In this model, a large bilateral region in the superior cerebellum is associated with articulatory rehearsal and a right-lateralized region in the inferior cerebellum is associated with the correction of errors within the working memory system. The Desmond et al. (1997) model was based on neuroimaging findings using item recognition tasks and comparisons between working memory and covert rehearsal tasks, whereas in this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we used a delayed serial recall (DSR) task because it relies more heavily on articulatory rehearsal, and our comparison tasks included both overt and covert speech tasks. Our results provide some support for the Desmond et al. (1997) model. In particular, we found multiple activation foci within the superior and inferior sectors of the cerebellum and evidence that these regions show different patterns of activation across working memory and speech tasks. However, the specific patterns of activation were not fully consistent with those reported by Desmond et al. (1997). Namely, our results indicate that activation in the superior sector should be functionally subdivided into a medial focus involved in speech processing and a lateral focus more specific to verbal working memory; the results also indicate that activation in the inferior sector is not uniquely right lateralized. These complex findings speak to the need for future studies to consider the speech-motor aspects of tasks, to investigate the functional significance of adjacent peaks of activation within large regions of cerebellar activation, and to use analysis procedures that support regional distinctions through direct statistical tests. Such studies would help to refine our understanding of how the cerebellum contributes to speech and verbal working memory.

How verbal memory loads consume attention

According to a traditional assumption about working memory, participants retain a series of verbal items for immediate recall using covert verbal rehearsal, without much need for attention. We reassessed this assumption by imposing a speeded, nonverbal choice reaction time (CRT) task following the presentation of each digit in a list to be recalled. When the memory load surpassed a few items, performance on the speeded CRT task became increasingly impaired. This CRT task impairment depended only on attention-related components of working memory; it was not alleviated by the presence of an auditory memory trace that automatically helped the recall of items at the ends of spoken lists. We suggest that attention-demanding refreshing of verbal stimuli occurs along with any covert rehearsal.

Remembering the first seizure and the diagnosis of epilepsy: How much impact do they have in our lives?

The aim of the study described here was to investigate what people with epilepsy (PWE) remember about their first seizures and the diagnoses they received, as well as what healthy control participants (HCP) remember about the first seizure they witnessed. Forty PWE were asked to recall in detail their first seizures and their diagnoses, and 40 HCP were asked to recall the first seizure they witnessed. All participants also rated aspects of their subjective reactions to these experiences. Although the first seizure was more surprising and received more covert rehearsal than the diagnosis, PWE recalled equal numbers of details about the two events. Free recall protocols showed that the memory narratives were longer for the first seizure than for the diagnosis. HCP also showed almost perfect recall for the personal circumstances of the first seizure they witnessed. These findings, combined with strong emotional reactions to these experiences, suggest that they lead to detailed and lasting memories.

Post-event spontaneous intrusive recollections and strength of memory for emotional events in men and women

Spontaneous intrusive recollections (SIRs) follow traumatic events in clinical and non-clinical populations. To determine whether any relationship exists between SIRs and enhanced memory for emotional events, participants viewed emotional or neutral films, had their memory for the films tested two days later, and estimated the number of SIRs they experienced for each film. SIR frequency related positively to memory strength, an effect more pronounced in the emotional condition. These findings represent the first demonstration of a relationship between SIRs occurring after an emotional experience and subsequent memory strength for that experience. The results are consistent with the possibility that emotional arousal leads both to elevated SIR frequency and better memory, and that the covert rehearsal associated with SIRs enhances memory for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. Additional evidence of menstrual cycle influences on SIR incidence in female participants appears to merit consideration in future work.

Flashbulb memory for 11 September 2001

AbstractThe recollection of particularly salient, surprising or consequential events is often called ‘flashbulb memories’. We tested people's autobiographical memory for details of 11 September 2001 by gathering a large national random sample (N = 678) of people's reports immediately following the attacks, and then by contacting them twice more, in September 2002 and August 2003. Three novel findings emerged. First, memory consistency did not vary as a function of demographic variables such as gender, geographical location, age or education. Second, memory consistency did not vary as a function of whether memory was tested before or after the 1‐year anniversary of the event, suggesting that media coverage associated with the anniversary did not impact memory. Third, the conditional probability of consistent recollection in 2003 given consistent recollection in 2002 was p = .73. In contrast, the conditional probability of consistent recollection in 2003 given inconsistent recollection in 2002 was p = .18. Finally, and in agreement with several prior studies, confidence in memory far exceeded consistency in the long term. Also, those respondents who revealed evidence for consistent flashbulb memory experienced more anxiety in response to the event, and engaged in more covert rehearsal than respondents who did not reveal evidence for consistent flashbulb memory. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The mental representation of music notation: Notational audiation.

This study investigated the mental representation of music notation. Notational audiation is the ability to internally "hear" the music one is reading before physically hearing it performed on an instrument. In earlier studies, the authors claimed that this process engages music imagery contingent on subvocal silent singing. This study refines the previously developed embedded melody task and further explores the phonatory nature of notational audiation with throat-audio and larynx-electromyography measurement. Experiment 1 corroborates previous findings and confirms that notational audiation is a process engaging kinesthetic-like covert excitation of the vocal folds linked to phonatory resources. Experiment 2 explores whether covert rehearsal with the mind's voice also involves actual motor processing systems and suggests that the mental representation of music notation cues manual motor imagery. Experiment 3 verifies findings of both Experiments 1 and 2 with a sample of professional drummers. The study points to the profound reliance on phonatory and manual motor processing--a dual-route stratagem--used during music reading. Further implications concern the integration of auditory and motor imagery in the brain and cross-modal encoding of a unisensory input.

Corticospinal facilitation during first and third person imagery

Motor imagery can be defined as the covert rehearsal of movement. Previous research with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has demonstrated that motor imagery increases the corticospinal excitability of the primary motor cortex in the area corresponding to the representation of the muscle involved in the imagined movement. This research, however, has been limited to imagery of oneself in motion. We extend the TMS research by contrasting first person imagery and third person imagery of index finger abduction-adduction movements. Motor evoked potentials were recorded from first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) during single pulse TMS. Participants performed first and third person motor imagery, visual imagery, and static imagery. Visual imagery involved non biological motion while static imagery involved a first person perspective of the unmoving hand. Relative to static imagery, excitability during imagined movement increased in FDI but not ADM. The facilitation in first person imagery adds to previous findings. A greater facilitation of MEPs recorded from FDI was found in third person imagery where the action was clearly attributable to another person. We interpret this novel result in the context of observed action and imagined observation of self action, and attribute the result to activation of mirror systems for matching the imagined action with an inner visuo-motor template.