modality effects in sentence recall

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The Journal of General Psychology, 2009, 136(2), 205–223Copyright © 2009 Heldref Publications

Modality Effects in Sentence Recall

PAULA GOOLKASIANPAUL W. FOOS

MIRRENDA EATONUniversity of North Carolina, Charlotte

ABSTRACT. The authors examined the intrusion of lures into sentence recall when manipulating the modality of distractor-word lists and sentences separately. Participants received a list of words followed by a sentence, and the list did or did not contain a lure related to a target in the sentence. Conceptual regeneration of the sentence during recall predicted higher lure intrusions than spontaneous intrusions in all conditions. However, if surface information is remembered, the modality of sentence and list should influence intrusions. The results from Experiment 1 showed that both factors are important, as intru-sions were always higher when lures were contained in the distractor-word list and when visual, rather than auditory, sentences were recalled. The authors also found distractor modality to influence the results. In Experiment 2, when interference from the word probe was reduced by removing 40% of the word probes, the disruptive effect of the auditory distractors was attenuated on the trials without the word probe. Also, the authors found lure intrusions to be dependent on the presence of the word probe.

Keywords: auditory memory recall, visual memory

POTTER AND LOMBARDI (1990) INTRODUCED the lure-intrusion para-digm to measure short-term sentence recall. Their finding that the lure was remembered as part of the sentence was important because it showed that recall involved more than just verbatim recall from short-term memory. Some regen-eration of the sentence from a representation based on meaning was evident in their findings. Recently, the lure-intrusion paradigm has been used to study modality effects in sentence recall. Modality effects compare what happens when stimulus items are presented in a least two different sensory modalities. Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Engelkamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe,

The authors wish to thank Taylor Grayson, Teneya Mormon, Brittany Hanigan, and Shafna Shamsuddin for their help with data collection and data analysis. This research was par-tially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-0552160).

Address correspondence to Paula Goolkasian, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA; [email protected] (e-mail).

206 The Journal of General Psychology

2005) found better recall with auditory than with visual sentences because of the added contribution of phonological information. We followed up Rummer and Schweppe’s research by investigating whether manipulating the modality of the distractor-word list separately from the sentence modality would influence lure intrusions.

In the lure-intrusion paradigm (Potter & Lombardi, 1990), participants are presented with a sentence preceded or followed by a distractor-word list. In the critical trials, a synonym (lure) of a target word in the sentence is included in the distractor-word list. The sentences are such that the lure fits the context of the sentence as well as or better than the target word. For example, in the following sentence—The boxers stood in the center of the ring while the referee spoke—the target word was center and the lure was middle. In the control trials, the distractor words are unrelated to the target word. To force attention to the distractor-word list, participants are asked to respond to a word probe that may have come from the distractor-word list prior to recalling the sentence.

Potter and Lombardi (1990) found that recall of the sentence was affected by related words presented in the distractor-word list. Because lure intrusions were found more frequently in the critical than in the control trials, they provided evi-dence that short-term sentence recall involves more than just verbatim memory. Instead, the recall of the lure as part of the sentence indicates some regeneration of the sentence from a representation based on meaning, using all of the recently activated words. Lee and Williams (1997) showed a similar lure-intrusion effect even when bilingual participants were presented with distractor words in a dif-ferent language from the sentence or when the distractor items appeared as pictures rather than words. They suggested that the lure-intrusion effect may result from conceptual-level interference at the time of recall rather than from lexical activation. However, with both sets of findings, the results indicate that short-term sentence recall involves some regeneration from semantic memory. Thus, when asked to recall a sentence immediately after it has been presented, recall is largely based on a representation of its meaning, rather than on surface or verbatim representation.

However, one would expect that if that explanation was sufficient, then the presentation format or modality of the sentences should have little influence because sentence recall is based on conceptual (semantic) rather than surface memory. Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) original paradigm used rapid serial-visual presentation (RSVP) for the sentences, with the exception of Experiment 6, in which the findings were generalized to auditory sentences. When Rummer and Engelkamp (2001) compared RSVP to auditory sentences, they replicated Potter and Lombardi’s main finding of a higher incidence of lure intrusions with critical compared with control sentences, but they also showed evidence of a modality effect. Sentence recall was more accurate with auditory than with visual sen-tences, and the results depended on whether the distractor-word list was presented before or after the sentence. Presenting the distractor-word list after the auditory

Goolkasian, Foos, & Eaton 207

sentence (as Potter & Lombardi had done in Experiment 6) prevented the par-ticipants from taking advantage of surface features in the form of phonological information to boost recall in comparison with the RSVP condition.

More recently, Rummer and Schweppe (2005) investigated the role of acous-tic information in sentence recall by presenting the whole sentence all at once and manipulating whether the participants read it aloud or silently. They found higher recall when sentences were read aloud and, in addition, reading aloud prevented lure intrusions. Their results suggest a stronger role for verbatim memory when sentences are heard in addition to being read.

In the present study, we also looked at the effect of modality on sentence recall within the lure-intrusion paradigm. However, our study differs from previ-ous work in that it manipulates the modality of the distractor-word list together with the modality of the sentence. A fundamental test of Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) conceptual regeneration hypothesis would be obtained if the incidence of lure intrusions are comparable when the distractor words are presented in the same and different modality from the sentences. If sentence recall involves regen-eration of all lexical entries from conceptual memory (Potter & Lombardi) or is due to conceptual confusion at recall (Lee & Williams, 1997), then same or dif-ferent presentation modality of the distractor words should not make a difference. However, if the modality of the distractor words has an effect on or interacts with sentence modality in influencing the incidence of intrusions, we would obtain strong support for the role of phonological information in sentence recall.

Although Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Engelkamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe, 2005) found evidence for modality effects in sentence recall, we wanted to make sure that those effects did not result from basic differences in the way that sense modalities respond to stimulus characteristics. Modality effects in short-term recall (higher recall with auditory presentation of words) are reliably obtained when stimuli are presented sequentially (e.g., Cowan, Saults, Elliott, & Moreno, 2002; Goolkasian & Foos, 2002; Greene, 1985; Greene, Elliott, & Smith, 1988; Penney, 1989). Rummer and Engelkamp compared RSVP to auditory materials. Vision is a predominately spatial sense, whereas hearing is a predominately temporal sense; a number of studies have shown that the ability to correctly determine the number of stimuli presented at short intervals is best for auditory presentation and worst for visual presentation (Lechelt, 1975; Sherrick & Cholewiak, 1986). This implies that stimulus events presented in a sequence across time are processed differently across modality. Differences in temporal and spatial processing may contribute to the obtained modality difference in immedi-ate sentence recall and may then produce differences in lure intrusions. A number of researchers have suggested that simultaneous, rather than sequential, visual presentation may be more comparable to auditory presentation for short-term memory performance (Frick, 1985; Kahneman & Henik, 1977; Penney, 1975).

To rule out presentation sequencing as a contributing factor to the modality effect in sentence recall, visually presented sentences were simultaneous rather


than RSVP, and we compared them with auditory sentences. Also, the distrac-tor-word list included three conditions—auditory and visual-serial lists and a visual-presentation condition in which the distractor words appeared simultane-ously. Differences in the findings that result from a comparison of the two visual distractor-word lists would be attributed to presentation sequencing, rather than to the modality effect.

Additionally, by manipulating the modality of the distractor-word list and sentence, we varied the similarity between the word list and sentence, and it is possible for similarity to affect sentence recall (Nairne, 1990). Nairne’s feature model of immediate memory makes a distinction between modality-dependent (presentation conditions) and modality-independent (internally generated) fea-tures and their role in recall tasks. Forgetting happens primarily because of inter-ference from contiguous traces in memory, and the greater similarity between the features of these traces, the poorer the recall. Features are represented as vectors and can be overwritten when subsequent features take the same value. Feature similarity can arise from presentation format conditions or from internally gener-ated features that result from the identification of stimulus information. From our perspective, the most interesting prediction of the feature model is the prediction that recall accuracy may depend on similarity between the presentation modal-ity of the distractor-word list and the sentence. Sentence recall was expected to be more resistant to interference when the distractor-word list is presented in a different modality.

Also, relevant to this prediction is a recent finding from serial-recall litera-ture (Cowan et al., 2002) that showed that better recall for auditory, rather than visual, material may come from a greater resistance of acoustic memory to output interference. Output interference refers to memory disruption as recall proceeds across output positions. Cowan et al. found that the modality effect was small for the first few positions, but evident in the late-output positions. Visual list performance declined toward the end of the list, whereas recall of auditory lists remained consistent across all serial positions. An output-interference explana-tion would predict that recall of visually presented sentences in comparison with auditory sentences would be less accurate and more vulnerable to intrusions. The similarity between the sentence and distractor modality would not be as important as the modality of the sentence and distractor-word list.

EXPERIMENT 1

We used a lure-intrusion paradigm with the distractor-word list presented before the sentence. We manipulated the modality of the sentences (auditory and visual) and the distractor-word list in a factorial design; the visually pre-sented sentences were simultaneous rather than RSVP. There were three types of distractor-word lists: auditory and visual-serial lists as well as an additional visual-presentation condition in which the distractor words appeared simultaneously. We


were interested in determining whether the modality of the distractor words or the similarity between the distractor-word list and sentence modality had an effect on the incidence of lure intrusions. In previous studies on the modality effect, criti-cal comparisons were made between auditory and visual sentences. However, in the present study, critical comparisons were those in which the modalities of the distractor words and the sentences are the same and different.

Support for Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) conceptual regeneration hypothe-sis would be obtained if lure intrusions are comparable when the distractor words are presented in a same or different modality than are the sentences. In contrast, if modality of the distractor words has an effect on or interacts with sentence modality, then, depending on the pattern of the finding, it may suggest alternate explanations. Evidence in support of a role for surface memory, as suggested by Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Engelkamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe, 2005), in short-term sentence recall would be evident if auditory sentences are recalled more accurately and with fewer instances of lure intrusions, in compari-son with visual sentences.

Method

Participants

Participants were 116 male and female undergraduate students from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. They were volunteers who participated to obtain extra credit points toward their psychology class grade. We restricted participation to those who did not have a history of vision or hearing abnormalities. We randomly assigned participants to one of six experimental groups: (a) audi-tory sentences and visual-simultaneous distractor words, (b) auditory sentences and visual-serial distractor words, (c) auditory sentences and auditory distractor words, (d) visual sentences and auditory distractor words, (e) visual sentences and visual-serial distractor words, and (f) visual sentences and visual-simultaneous distractor words.

Materials and Apparatus

We used the 20 sentences and distractor-word lists developed by Potter and Lombardi (1990) as the stimulus materials. Each sentence included a target word, which was a noun and had a synonym (lure) that could substitute for the target without changing sentence meaning. Sentences varied between 11 to 15 words. The distractor-word list associated with each sentence included five nouns that were similar in length to the target and lure but unrelated to the sentence meaning. The sentences were developed so that the lures fit the context of the sentence as well as or, in some cases, better than the target word itself. Figure 1 provides an example of the sentence and distractor-word list. The target word and lure are italicized.


We developed auditory and visual versions of each of the 20 sentences and corresponding distractor-word list. The auditory sentences and distractor words were sound files created and edited in Sound Edit 16 (version 2.0; Macromedia, 2001) with a female voice. The visual sentences and distractor-word lists were printed in Arial font (24 point) and saved in .pict format.

Stimulus presentation and data collection were controlled by SuperLab running on an Apple Macintosh PowerMac G4 computer. Visual stimuli were displayed in the center on a 15-in. Apple Macintosh flat-screen monitor. We played auditory stimuli through the computer on external speakers in stereo.

Procedure

All participants were run individually in sessions of around 30 min. They were first given five practice trials to familiarize themselves with the stimulus materials and task, followed by 20 experimental trials randomly divided into critical and control trials. The critical trials were those in which the lure was included as one of the five distractor words and the control trials were those trials that did not include the lure. As in the original paradigm developed by Potter and Lombardi (1990), when the lure word was included in the distractor-word list, it

350 ms ***

300 ms Blank screen

Distractor-word month exhibit (floor) summer license hotelList (750 ms each)

Visual mask %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Sentence The modern art display at the museum has some very 4,500 ms unusual paintings.

Visual mask %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%500 ms %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Word probe HOTEL

Subject keystroke

Sentence recall

FIGURE 1. Outline of stimulus events used in a sample trial. Lure and target items are italicized. The lure was used in the critical trial, whereas the word in parentheses substituted for the lure in the control trial.


was never the last word presented in the list nor was it used as the probe word. For each of the six experimental conditions tested in the experiment, there were two versions of the materials created to counterbalance whether a given sentence appeared with or without a lure. The two versions were randomly assigned to participants in each of the six groups. There were 16 participants in the four conditions with the serial-distractor-word lists and 25 in the two simultaneous conditions. Sample sizes differed across conditions because the simultaneous conditions were run as a follow-up to the other conditions.

The information provided in the first column of Figure 1 outlines the sequence of stimulus events that occurred on each trial. Each trial began with a participant’s keystroke. Three asterisks appeared in the center of the screen for 350 ms, followed by a blank screen (300 ms). The distractor-word list followed, with one word at a time, except in the visual-simultaneous condition. In the visual-serial distractor condition, the word appeared centered on the screen for 750 ms. In the auditory condition, the screen remained blank when each word was spoken. Although word length varied between 500 to 1,000 ms, the average across the five distractor words in each list was approximately 750 ms. In the visual-simultaneous distractor condition, the five distractor words appeared all at once across two lines centered on the screen for 3,750 ms. The exposure duration was determined by adding the time needed to present each of the distractor items as a serial list (750 ms × 5).

Following the final distractor item, a mask (either two rows of percent signs [visual] or a 440 Hz tone [auditory]) appeared for 500 ms. The sentence came next. In the visual condition, the presentation time of 4,500 ms was determined by averaging the time needed to present the auditory sentences. The visual sentences were centered in the display and presented in one or two rows. The mask appeared for 500 ms. The probe word followed (either auditory or visual, depending on the distractor-word list condition) and the participant made a keystroke response to indicate whether the probe word was present in the distractor-word list. The probe word was always presented in the same modality as the distractor-word list. There were an equal number of trials in which the probe word was included or not in the distractor-word list. After the word-probe task, participants were asked to recall the sentence aloud.

The participants were told that the study was about sentence memory. They were instructed to pay attention to the stimulus material and respond to the probe word by pressing either the f or j on the keyboard to indicate whether making the probe had appeared in the word list. The association of each key with the pres-ence and absence response was practiced, and labels for the keys were always available at the bottom of the monitor. After the keystroke, participants recalled the sentence aloud as accurately as they could, and the experimenter recorded the recall response.

There were six conditions manipulated between groups of participants. For three of the groups, we used the same presentation modality for the sentences and


distractor-word lists: (a) auditory sentences paired with auditory distractor-word lists or (b) visual sentences paired either with visual-serial or visual-simultaneous distractor-word lists. For the remaining groups, we mixed the modality: (a) audi-tory sentences and visual-serial or visual-simultaneous distractor-word lists or (b) visual sentences and auditory distractor-word lists.

For each participant, we measured accuracy of recalling the sentence by looking at the proportion of words (except for the target word) in each sentence that the participant recalled correctly on each trial. We calculated means for each participant across the 20 sentences. We also noted accuracy in the word-probe task by measuring the proportion of correct responses to the word probes across the 20 trials in each session. We also measured incidence of lure and spontaneous intrusions, respectively, for each participant by noting the number of times he or she recalled the lure word instead of the target word in the criti-cal and control trials.

Results

We removed data for 2 of the participants from further analysis because of below-chance performance in the word-probe task. Intrusion data from the 114 other participants were analyzed with a 2 × 3 × 2 mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) with sentence modality (auditory, visual) and distractor-list modal-ity (auditory, visual serial, visual simultaneous) as between-subjects factors and incidence of lure and spontaneous intrusions as the within-subjects factor. We conducted the analyses with Type III sum of squares and F values for the repeated-measures effects, including the Greenhouse–Geisser correction, to pro-tect against possible violation of the homogeneity assumption.

Lure and Spontaneous Intrusions

Table 1 presents the mean incidence of intrusions for each of the experimental conditions. As expected, there was a higher incidence of intrusions when the lures were included in the distractor-word list on the critical trials (M = .14, SD = .14) than in the control trials when their recall was spontaneous (M = .06, SD = .08), F(1, 108) = 60.00, p < .01, η2 = .36. This difference was found to interact with the modality of the sentence, F(1, 108) = 22.64, p < .01, η2 = .17. A test of simple effects within the interaction (p < .05) showed that for both sentence modalities, lure intrusions occurred significantly more often than did spontaneous intrusions, but the difference was greater with visual than with auditory sentences.

However, the significant effect of distractor-word list modality, F(2, 108) = 7.14, p < .01, η2 = .12. Post hoc tests (Scheffé at p < .05 level of significance) indicated that auditory distractors were associated with more intrusions (M = .15, SD = .13) than were visual distractors presented either in a serial list (M = .08, SD = .12) or all at once (M = .09, SD = .12). The two visual-distractor conditions


did not differ from each other. There was also an effect of sentence modality, F(1, 108) = 43.91, p < .01, η2 = .29. Intrusions were greater when visual rather than auditory sentences were recalled (.16 [SD = .15] vs. .05 [SD = .07]). However, sentence modality did not interact with distractor modality, F < 1, ns. These results are presented in Figure 2 to show how same or different list modality influenced the rate of intrusions. Auditory distractors increased the rate of intru-sions whether they were in the same (auditory) or different (visual) modality as the presented sentences.

It is interesting that there was no three-way interaction with type of intru-sion, F(2, 108) = 1.99, p = .14, and no two-way interaction between type of intrusion and distractor modality, F(2, 108) = 1.70, p = .19. Means in Table 1 show that the higher incidence of intrusions when recalling visual sentences after listening to auditory distractors occurred with spontaneous and lure intru-sions. The lower incidence of intrusions when recalling auditory sentences presented with distractor-word lists in a different modality occurred with both types of intrusions as well.

Sentence Recall

Table 2 provides the mean accuracy across groups for sentence recall and the word-probe task. Consistent with previous research (Rummer & Engelkamp, 2001), sentence recall (without the target word) was more accurate with auditory (M = .87, SD = .08) than with visual (M = .79, SD = .13) presentation, F(1, 108) = 19.76, p < .01, η2 = .16. The modality of the distractor-word list did not have an effect on sentence recall, F(2, 108) = 1.78, p < .17, and sentence modality was not found to interact with distractor modality, F < 1, ns.

TABLE 1. Means and Standard Deviations of Proportion of Lure and Spontaneous Intrusions for Each of the Experimental Conditions in Experiment 1

Lure Spontaneous

Condition M SD M SD

Auditory sentence Auditory distractor .13 .09 .07 .07 Visual distractor .06 .06 .01 .02 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .03 .05 .04 .07Visual sentence Auditory distractor .26 .18 .16 .12 Visual distractor .22 .16 .04 .07 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .21 .18 .07 .09


FIGURE 2. Mean proportion of intrusions as a function of sentence and distractor modality in Experiment 1. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

Distractor Auditory Visual serial Visual simultaneous

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Sentence Modality

TABLE 2. Means and Standard Deviations of Accuracy Across Groups for Sentence Recall and Word Probe Task in Experiment 1

Recall Word probe

Condition M SD M SD

Auditory sentence Auditory distractor .86 .08 .89 .05 Visual distractor .92 .05 .76 .12 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .86 .08 .82 .12 Visual sentence Auditory distractor .78 .11 .91 .08 Visual distractor .80 .14 .79 .14 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .78 .14 .82 .12


Word-Probe Task

Accuracy in the word-probe task did not vary as a function of sentence modality, F < 1, ns; however, there was a significant effect of distractor modality, F(2, 108) = 10.55, p < .01, η2 = .16. Post hoc tests (Scheffé at the p < .05 level of significance) showed that the effect reflected the more accurate response to auditory, rather than visual, word probes. Responses to the word probes in the two visual-distractor conditions did not differ from each other. As can be seen in Table 2, the only variable that influenced accuracy in the word-probe task was the modality of the distractor-word list.

Discussion

The major finding in this experiment is the effect of distractor-word list modality. Auditory distractors were associated with a higher incidence of intru-sions than visual distractors. This effect was obtained in addition to the effect of sentence modality, the increased incidence of intrusions with visual as com-pared with auditory sentences, originally reported by Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Engelkamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe, 2005). However, the fact that the auditory-visual difference occurred with spontaneous and lure intrusions and extended to overall accuracy in the sentence and word-probe task suggests that the findings might result from something other than the relation between the sentence and distractor-word list.

Experiment 2 explores another interpretation for the findings by manipu-lating the presence or absence of the word probe. However, the findings do not support Nairne’s (1990) feature model because neither the intrusion data nor the sentence-recall data show better performance when different, rather than the same, modalities were used. For example, when distractor-word list and sentence modalities were different, there was a greater differ-ence between auditory and visual intrusions (M = .17, SD = .09) than when the same modality was used (M = .04, SD = .04). Sentence recall was not found to be more resistant to interference when the distractor-word list was presented in a different modality. Instead, the findings are more compatible with the notion that acoustic memory may have greater resistance to output interference in comparison with visual memory (Cowan et al., 2002). Audi-tory sentences were recalled better and were less susceptible to intrusions in comparison with visual sentences. Also, auditory distractors were associ-ated with more intrusions than were visual distractors. However, even that explanation is not sufficient to explain why lure intrusions were greater when auditory sentences were presented with auditory lures (M = .13, SD = .09) in comparison with visual lures (M = .06, SD = .06). Also, why lure intru-sions were more prevalent than were spontaneous intrusions when auditory sentences were recalled.


Also not supported by the findings is the argument that visual lures are not as effective as auditory lures because the distractor words were presented serially rather than simultaneously. The findings from the two types of visual distractors are reported in Tables 1 and 2, and differences between the two were not evident with any of the reported measures.

However, the most puzzling aspect of the finding is the variation in the rate of spontaneous intrusions across the six experimental conditions. Because the sentences and distractor words were consistent across condition, the only explanation was interference from the word-probe task itself. It is possible that the presence of the word probe interfered with sentence recall to some extent and contributed to an increase in the intrusion rate. The fact that audi-tory probes disrupted both auditory and visual sentence recall, whereas visual probes had a smaller effect and the effect occurred with both types of intru-sions, suggests some influence of the word probe itself. In fact, when auditory sentences were presented with a visual word probe, there was a negligible rate of spontaneous intrusions, and sentence recall was accurate (M = .89, SD = .06), providing strong evidence for verbatim recall from short-term memory. We designed Experiment 2 to try to reduce the interference produced by the presence of the word probe without any change in the task. Only when the interfering effects of the word probe have been removed will we be able to test whether the findings provide some support Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) conceptual regeneration hypothesis.

EXPERIMENT 2

In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of the word-probe task on the lure-intrusion effect by eliminating 40% of the word probes. Eliminations occurred randomly, and participants were not aware of when one would happen. As in Experiment 1, we used a lure-intrusion paradigm with a distractor word presented before the sentence, and we varied the modality of the sentence and distractor-word list. However, in this experiment, we did not use the visual-serial distractor condition. We were interested in the extent to which elimination of the word probes would influence the pattern of findings from Experiment 1. We hypothesized that the absence of the word probe on a significant minority of the trials would not alter the nature of the dual task because participants would still expect the word probe prior to the sentence-recall task. Of course, the absence of the processing involved in having to search the word list for a probe should result in a higher level of sentence recall on those trials and, thus, a lower level of intrusions. More importantly, a comparison of the findings from the trials with the word probe to those in which the word probe was removed should isolate any interfering effects that result from presence of the probe itself. Findings consistent with Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) conceptual regeneration hypothesis should be evident in both sets of trials with and without the word probe.


Method

We drew 75 additional participants from the participant pool described in Experiment 1. The materials and apparatus were the same as in the previous experiment. We tested four experimental conditions: (a) auditory sentence and auditory distractor-word list, (b) auditory sentence and visual-simultaneous distractor-word list, (c) visual sentences and auditory distractor-word list, and (d) visual sentences and visual-simultaneous distractor-word list.

As in the previous experiment, each participant received five practice trials, followed by 20 experimental trials randomly divided into control and critical trials. There were two versions of the materials created for each experimental condition to counterbalance whether a given sentence appeared with or without a lure. The two versions were randomly assigned to an equal number of participants in each of the four groups.

The procedure followed the sequence of events identified in Figure 1, except on 8 of the 20 trials the word probe was absent and the mask that preceded it had its exposure duration extended by 1,500 ms. The eight trials without the word probe were randomly determined for each of the experimental conditions and evenly divided among those that included the word probe in the distractor-word list and those that did not. The additional 1,500-ms exposure duration for the mask was determined from the mean response time to the word-probe task in Experiment 1. In this way, the timing of the trials with and without the word probe were approximately equivalent. The only difference was the presence of the word probe and the participant’s keystroke response. In all other respects, the procedure for this experiment was the same as in the first one.

Results

We removed data from 7 of the participants because of below-chance per-formance in the word-probe task. We analyzed the mean proportion of intrusions from the remaining 68 participants with a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA with sentence modality and distractor-list modality as between-subjects variables and probe (presence and absence) and intrusion as within-subjects variables. We con-ducted the analyses with Type III sums of squares and F values for the repeated-measures effects, including the Greenhouse–Geisser correction, to protect against possible violation of the homogeneity assumption.

Lure and Spontaneous Intrusions

Table 3 presents the intrusion data for each of the experimental condi-tions. As in the previous experiment, the analysis of the intrusion data showed a strong effect of sentence modality, F(1, 63) = 34.20, p < .01, η2 = .36, and an additional effect of distractor-list modality, F(1, 63) = 4.22, p < .04, η2 =


.06. Auditory distractors were associated with more intrusions (M = .13, SD =

.15) than were visual distractors (M = .09, SD = .12), and visual sentences were recalled with more intrusions (M = .17, SD = .15) than were auditory sentences (M = .05, SD = .08).

However, removing the word probe from 40% of the trials weakened the main effect of type of intrusion. Although recall of the lure was higher in the critical (M = .12, SD = .17) sentences compared with the control sentences (M = .09, SD = .15), the effect of type of intrusion was only marginally significant, F(1, 63) = 3.07, p = .08, η2 = .05, and type of intrusion did not interact with sentence modality, F(1, 63) = 1.19, p = .28.

The presence of the word probe increased the rate of intrusions by 2.5 times, .15 (with probe; SD = .20) and .06 (without probe; SD = .11). In addi-tion to the strong main effect of word probe, F(1, 63) = 27.39, p < .01, η2 = .30, there were interactions of word probe with sentence modality, F(1, 63) = 27.39, p < .01, η2 = .30, and sentence modality and type of intrusion, F(1, 63) = 5.61, p < .05, η2 = .08.

Figure 3 presents the three-way effect broken down by word-probe condition. Simple interaction effects the three-way interaction showed a significant sentence modality by type of intrusion effect only when the word probe was present,

TABLE 3. Means and Standard Deviations of Proportion of Lure and Spontaneous Intrusions for Each of the Experimental Conditions in Experiment 2

Lure Spontaneous

Condition M SD M SD

Word probe present

Auditory sentence Auditory distractor .08 .12 .12 .16 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .05 .09 .06 .14Visual sentence Auditory distractor .32 .31 .23 .19 Visual distractor (simultaneous) .25 .20 .14 .16

Word probe absent



F(1, 63) = 4.67, p < .05, η2 = .07. Without the probe, the sentence modality by type of intrusion interaction was not significant, F(1, 63) = 1.60, p = .21, and there was no main effect of type of intrusion, F(1, 63) = 2.02, p = .16. Lure intru-sions occurred more frequently than did spontaneous intrusions only when visual sentences were recalled after responding to the word probe. On the trials without the word probe, the intrusion rate did not vary significantly by type.

Sentence Recall

Table 4 presents the accuracy data for each of the groups. A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA of these data showed that the presence of the word probe interfered with sentence recall, F(1, 63) = 57.99, p < .01, η2 = .58. Recall accuracy increased when the word probe was removed. Means for the trials with and without the word probe were .80 (SD = .11) and .88 (SD = .09), respectively. The word probe also inter-acted with distractor modality, F(1, 63) = 4.21, p < .05, η2 = .06. Simple effects (p < .05) of distractor modality for each of the word-probe conditions showed that

FIGURE 3. Mean proportion of intrusions as a function of sentence modality, by type of intrusion by word probe effect in Experiment 2. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

Sentence modality Auditory Visual

0.40

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

Intr

usio

ns

Word Probe

Present Absent0.40

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00 Lure Spontaneous Lure Spontaneous

Type of Intrusion

Intr

usio

ns


the interaction resulted from significantly more interference from the auditory than from the visual distractors, but only when the word probe was present. This finding shows that it was not the modality of the distractor-word list in and of itself that interfered with sentence recall, but rather the presence of the auditory (as compared with visual) word probe.

As expected, auditory sentences were again recalled at a higher level (M = .86, SD = .11) than were visual sentences (M = .82, SD = .09), F(1, 63) = 4.32, p < .05, η2 = .06, but the effect was smaller than in the previous experiment. There was also a significant effect of distractor-list modality, F(1, 63) = 5.19, p < .05, η2 = .08. Sentence recall was higher when the word list and word probe were read (M = .86, SD = .09) rather than heard (M = .82, SD = .12). The two variables were not found to interact, F < 1, ns, nor were any of the other interactions significant.

Word-Probe Task

The responses to the word probe are also summarized in the second column of Table 4. Mean proportions were analyzed with a 2 × 2 ANOVA. Removal of the word probe on 40% of the trials in this experiment caused the accuracy data for the word-probe task to show no significant effects for any of the manipulated variables. There was no effect of sentence modality, F < 1, ns; distractor modality,

TABLE 4. Means and Standard Deviations of Accuracy Across Groups for Sentence Recall and Word-Probe Task in Experiment 2

Recall Word probe

Condition M SD M SD

Word probe present


Word probe absent

Auditory sentence Auditory distractor .89 .09 — — Visual distractor (simultaneous) .91 .09 — —Visual sentence Auditory distractor .84 .09 — — Visual distractor (simultaneous) .88 .08 — —


F(1, 63) = 2.87, p < .10; or the interaction of sentence and distractor modality, F(1, 63) = 1.26, p < .27.

Discussion

There were several distinct differences in the pattern of findings on the trials with and without the word probe. Without the word probe, intrusions were less frequent and sentence accuracy was improved. It is apparent that responding to the word probe interfered with sentence recall. However, of primary relevance is the fact that in the absence of the word probe, it does not appear that the lure was recalled any more frequently in the critical, compared with the control, trials. There was a small increase in lures relative to spontaneous intrusions when audi-tory sentences were recalled, but the effect was not significant and was evident only because there were no spontaneous intrusions at all in this condition. When visual sentences were recalled, the incidence of lure and spontaneous intrusions was comparable. Yet, on trials that required a response to a word probe, visual sentence recall was highly vulnerable to distractor-word intrusion. It appears that the lure intrusion effect depends not only on the relation between the lure and target words but also on the processing of a word probe. Also noteworthy is the fact that the disruptive effect of auditory distractors on sentence recall was attenu-ated on the trials without the word probes. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of short-term sentence recall in the next section.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The findings from Experiments 1 and 2 are consistent in showing modal-ity effects in both lure intrusions and sentence recall. Auditory sentences were remembered better than were visual sentences, and fewer intrusions occurred with these better-remembered auditory sentences. Simultaneous visual presenta-tion was no better than successive visual presentation, supporting modality rather than spatial-temporal effects. These findings are consistent with the work of Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Englekamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe, 2005) and provide additional evidence that short-term sentence recall of audi-tory sentences is based on surface or verbatim representation. When interference from the word-probe task was attenuated, there was no evidence for recall from semantic memory. These experiments also show the effect of distractor modality on the incidence of intrusions and on sentence recall.

In all cases, more intrusions followed auditory distractors, undoubtedly because auditory distractors were remembered better than were visual distractors. Consistent with this interpretation, accuracy in the word-probe task was superior with auditory items. To some degree, the obtained modality effects might result from a greater resistance of acoustic memory to output interference in comparison with visual memory (Cowan et al., 2002) or an attenuation of attention to visual


presentation (Foos & Goolkasian, 2005). To sort out these alternate explanations, future researchers should vary the serial position of the target and lure within the sentence and test the influence of the target’s position on incidence of lure intrusions and sentence recall. An output-interference explanation would predict that modality differences would occur with recall of material at the end of the sentence, although an attenuation of attention explanation would show consistent modality effects irrespective of target position in the sentence.

Our findings are not consistent with Potter and Lombardi’s (1990) concep-tual regeneration hypothesis. If sentence recall in the lure-intrusion paradigm is primarily based on a representation of its meaning rather than on verbatim rep-resentation, then the auditory–visual modality of the sentence and the distractor- word list would not have been important, and the pattern of lure intrusions would have been the same across modality variations in the sentence and the distractor-word list. Instead, our findings show that the recall of the sentence was affected by related words in the distractor-word list only when visual sentences were recalled and participants were required to respond to a word-probe task prior to recall. In particular, auditory sentences were recalled accurately and, in some condi-tions, without any evidence of intrusion. The relatively low incidence of the lure intrusions with auditory sentences supports the work of Rummer and colleagues (Rummer & Englekamp, 2001; Rummer & Schweppe, 2005) by highlighting a role for phonological information and recall from surface memory.

Additionally, the results of Experiment 2 showed that sentence recall in the lure-intrusion paradigm is affected by the presence of a word probe. The puzzling findings from Experiment 1 of variations among the conditions in the incidence of spontaneous intrusions were partially resolved in Experiment 2 by removing the word probe on 40% of the trials. When sentences were recalled without the mem-ory-disrupting effects of a word probe, intrusions declined dramatically. Lures are more likely to intrude when they are well remembered and thus auditory lures result in more intrusions. Removing the processing of a word probe improves memory, and thus intrusions are reduced and become very unlikely for well-remembered auditory sentences. With visual sentences some lure intrusions still occur.

AUTHOR NOTES

Paula Goolkasian is a professor of psychology and director of cognitive science at the Univer-sity of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is an Executive Editor of The Journal of General Psychology. Her current research interests are in visual perception and attention. Paul W. Foos is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and a consulting editor of The Journal of General Psychology. His current research interests are in the fields of gerontology and memory. Mirrenda Eaton is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

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Manuscript submitted January 11, 2008Revision accepted for publication July 22, 2008

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