Does the Experimenter Presence Affect Verbal Working Memory?

Abstract

Recent studies showed that the presence of the experimenter hinders executive functions. Belletier and Camos (2018) extended these findings to working memory, reporting a detrimental effect of the experimenter presence only when participants performed an aloud concurrent articulation during maintenance. Under such a condition, participants likely relied on an attentional maintenance mechanism rather that an articulatory mechanism, supporting the account of a capture of attention by the social presence. However, other results using the Stroop Task demonstrate an improvement on executive functions (Garcia-Marques & Fernandes, 2024, for a meta-analysis). Thus, the present study aimed at reassessing the impact of experimenter's presence reported by Belletier and Camos (2018) on a larger sample, with a within-subject manipulation of concurrent articulation, a variation in the secondary task, and the addition of another type of concurrent articulation. In the present study, participants alone or in the presence of the experimenter performed a Brown-Peterson task in which they maintained letters during a 12-second interval, during which they either stayed silent, uttered aloud, or whispered non-sense syllables. They had also to perform either no secondary task, a parity or a location judgement task. Results confirmed Belletier and Camos' (2018) findings, showing that the experimenter presence hindered memory performance when participants performed a secondary task under any type of concurrent articulation. A silent context or the absence of secondary task preserved recall from the effect of experimenter's presence.

Keywords: Attentional Maintenance; Concurrent Articulation; Experimenter Presence; Working Memory.

Figure 1

Examples of unfilled and filled trials (here with 2 memory letters). In the filled trials, the secondary task can be a location (here depicted) or a parity (squares were replaced by digits) judgment task. During the 12s interval, participants remained either silent, whispered “ba-bi-bou” or repeat aloud “ba-bi-bou”. The order of these concurrent articulation conditions was counterbalanced across participants.

Figure 2

Mean percentage of recall according to Concurrent task (unfilled vs. filled trials), Concurrent articulation (silent, whispered vs. aloud), and Context (alone vs. in the experimenter’s presence). Error bars represent standard errors.