TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lange, Elke B.
A1  - Oberauer, Klaus
T1  - Overwriting of phonemic features in serial recall
N2  - We tested explanations of the phonological similarity effect in verbal short-term memory: the confusion hypothesis assumes that serial positions of similar items are confused. The overwriting hypothesis states that similar items share feature representations, which are overwritten. Participants memorised a phonologically dissimilar list of CVC-trigrams (Experiment 1) or words (Experiment 2 and 3) for serial recall. In the retention interval they real aloud other items. The material of the distractor task jointly overlapped one item of the memory list. The recall of this item was impaired, and the effect was not based on intrusions from the distractor task alone. The results provide evidence for feature overwriting as one potential mechanism contributing to the phonological similarity effect
Y1  - 2005
SN  - 0965-8211
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lange, Elke B.
T1  - Disruption of attention by irrelevant stimuli in serial recall
N2  - In four experiments the behavioral consequences of an involuntary attentional distraction concerning memory performance was investigated. The working memory model of Cowan (1995) predicts a performance deficit for memory representations that are held in an active state when the focus of attention is distracted by a change in physical properties. In the first experiment, the distraction was realized by an irrelevant tone, which was repeatedly presented and exchanged by another tone unexpectedly. Further experiments explored an analogous effect of irrelevant visual- spatial stimuli. The experiments demonstrated a domain-specific distraction effect: an irrelevant tone change impaired performance in verbal but not in spatial serial recall, whereas a change of position of an irrelevant object disrupted spatial but not verbal memory performance. The results are discussed in the context of several memory models that offer accounts for the effect of irrelevant changing state sounds. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Y1  - 2005
SN  - 0749-596X
ER  -