Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory

Abstract

Many accounts of working memory posit specialized storage mechanisms for the maintenance of serial order. We explore an alternative, that maintenance is achieved through temporary activation in the language production architecture. Four experiments examined the extent to which the phonological similarity effect can be explained as a sublexical speech error. Phonologically similar nonword stimuli were ordered to create tongue twister or control materials used in four tasks: reading aloud, immediate spoken recall, immediate typed recall, and serial recognition. Dependent measures from working memory (recall accuracy) and language production (speech errors) fields were used. Even though lists were identical except for item order, robust effects of tongue twisters were observed. Speech error analyses showed that errors were better described as phoneme rather than item ordering errors. The distribution of speech errors was comparable across all experiments and exhibited syllable-position effects, suggesting an important role for production processes. Implications for working memory and language production are discussed.

Fig. 1

Relative proportion of items with phoneme contextual substitutions (PCS) and phoneme noncontextual substitutions (PNCS) as a function of List Position for rapid reading of tongue twisters (TTs) in Experiment 1.

Fig. 2

Mean proportion of errors as a function of list position for the tongue twister manipulation in spoken recall (Experiment 2) using strict serial scoring criteria.

Fig. 3

Relative proportion of items with phoneme contextual substitutions (PCS) and phoneme noncontextual substitutions (PNCS) as a function of list position for spoken recall of tongue twisters (TTs) in Experiment 2.

Fig. 4

Mean proportion of errors as a function of list position for the tongue twister manipulation in typed recall (Experiment 3) using strict serial scoring criteria.

Fig. 5

Mean response duration as a function of list position for the tongue twister manipulation in typed recall (Experiment 3) using strict serial scoring criteria.

Fig. 6

Relative proportion of items with phoneme contextual substitutions (PCS) and phoneme noncontextual substitutions (PNCS) as a function of list position for typed recall of tongue twisters (TTs) in Experiment 3.

Fig. 7

Mean proportion of errors as a function of list position for the tongue twister (TT) manipulation in serial recognition (Experiment 4) using strict serial scoring criteria.

Fig. 8

Mean reaction time as a function of list position for the tongue twister (TT) manipulation in serial recognition (Experiment 4) using strict serial scoring criteria.