Investigating cumulative disruptive interference in memory for melodies, words, and pictures

Publication date: December 2019Source: New Ideas in Psychology, Volume 55Author(s): Steffen A. Herff, Kirk N. Olsen, Aydin Anic, Nora K. SchaalAbstractCumulative disruptive interference in memory describes the well-established phenomenon that recognition performance decreases as the number of intervening items between first and second stimulus presentation increases. Memory for melody has been shown to exhibit resilience to this type of recognition interference, and a novel Regenerative Multiple Representation (RMR) conjecture has been developed to explain these findings. Here, we critically assess, replicate, and extend key findings and predictions of the RMR conjecture. In four tasks (N = 68), we critically test whether memory for melodies’ (Task 1) resilience to cumulative disruptive interference holds when compared to memory for pictures (Task 2) and words (Task 3–4) when many of the previous analytical and methodological discrepancies within the literature are accounted for. Furthermore, we test a prediction of the RMR conjecture that words written in a plain sans-serif style of writing (Task 3) should show stronger cumulative disruptive interference compared to words in an elaborate longhand style of writing (Task 4). Lastly, we explored potential auditory context effects of noisy unintelligible multi-talker babbling on memory for melodies, pictures, and words. As hypothesized, we found strong cumulative disruptive interference in recognition for written words a...

Source: New Ideas in Psychology - May 28, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research