Memory for Speech under Difficult Listening Conditions
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Memory for speech relies on the processing of the speech signal as it is received. With aging, working memory and processing speed decline making comprehension of speech, and hence its memory, difficult. Older adults overcome this challenge by utilizing their preserved linguistic knowledge as long as the total by processing burden for speech is below a threshold of resource overload. An experiment is presented here in which the processing burden for comprehension of spoken sentences in increased by increasing the speech rate and adding syntactic complexity. The recall accuracy for these sentences is compared between young and older adults to examine the possible compensatory mechanisms employed by older adults in the face of such challenges in their everyday lives.Cite
Pupillometry
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Understanding speech in the presence of background sound can be challenging for older adults. Speech comprehension in noise appears to depend on working memory and executive-control processes (e.g., Heald and Nusbaum, 2014), and their augmentation through training may have rehabilitative potential for age-related hearing loss. We examined the efficacy of adaptive working-memory training (Cogmed; Klingberg et al., 2002) in 24 older adults, assessing generalization to other working-memory tasks (near-transfer) and to other cognitive domains (far-transfer) using a cognitive test battery, including the Reading Span test, sensitive to working memory (e.g., Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). We also assessed far transfer to speech-in-noise performance, including a closed-set sentence task (Kidd et al., 2008). To examine the effect of cognitive training on benefit obtained from semantic context, we also assessed transfer to open-set sentences; half were semantically coherent (high-context) and half were semantically anomalous (low-context). Subjects completed 25 sessions (0.5-1 h each; 5 sessions/week) of both adaptive working memory training and placebo training over 10 weeks in a crossover design. Subjects' scores on the adaptive working-memory training tasks improved as a result of training. However, training did not transfer to other working memory tasks, nor to tasks recruiting other cognitive domains. We did not observe any training-related improvement in speech-in-noise performance. Measures of working memory correlated with the intelligibility of low-context, but not high-context, sentences, suggesting that sentence context may reduce the load on working memory. The Reading Span test significantly correlated only with a test of visual episodic memory, suggesting that the Reading Span test is not a pure-test of working memory, as is commonly assumed.
Working memory training
Memory span
Cognitive Training
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The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a longitudinal design. A total of 104 children were assessed on verbal WM, phonological short-term memory (pSTM), vocabulary, and sentence recall skills at age 6 and 1 year later at age 7. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed a robust direct predictive effect of pSTM and vocabulary on sentence recall at Time 1 and of verbal WM on sentence recall at Time 2, supporting Baddeley’s WM architecture. Additionally, pSTM and sentence recall abilities at age 6 predicted verbal WM and vocabulary at 7 years, respectively, regardless of autoregressive effects. These results support the notion of the dynamic nature of the language system and suggest a key role of specific memory abilities underlying sentence recall in language development during childhood.
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We set out to examine the impact of perceptual, linguistic, and capacity demands on performance of verbal working-memory tasks. The Ease of Language Understanding model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) provides a framework for testing the dynamics of these interactions within the auditory-cognitive system.Adult native speakers of English (n = 45) participated in verbal working-memory tasks requiring processing and storage of words involving different linguistic demands (closed/open set). Capacity demand ranged from 2 to 7 words per trial. Participants performed the tasks in quiet and in speech-spectrum-shaped noise. Separate groups of participants were tested at different signal-to-noise ratios. Word-recognition measures were obtained to determine effects of noise on intelligibility.Contrary to predictions, steady-state noise did not have an adverse effect on working-memory performance in every situation. Noise negatively influenced performance for the task with high linguistic demand. Of particular importance is the finding that the adverse effects of background noise were not confined to conditions involving declines in recognition.Perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive demands can dynamically affect verbal working-memory performance even in a population of healthy young adults. Results suggest that researchers and clinicians need to carefully analyze task demands to understand the independent and combined auditory-cognitive factors governing performance in everyday listening situations.
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Cognitive resource theory
Elementary cognitive task
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Immediate serial recall of sentences has been shown to be superior to that of unrelated words. This study was designed to further explore how this effect might emerge in recall and to establish whether it also extends to serial recognition, a different form of response task that has relatively reduced output requirements. Using auditory or visual presentation of sequences, we found a substantial advantage for sentences over lists in serial recall, an effect shown on measures of recall accuracy, order, intrusion, and omission errors and reflected in transposition gradients. In contrast however, recognition memory based on a standard change detection paradigm gave only weak and inconsistent evidence for a sentence superiority effect. However, when a more sensitive staircase procedure imported from psychophysics was used, a clear sentence advantage was found although the effect sizes were smaller than those observed in serial recall. These findings suggest that sentence recall benefits from automatic processes that utilise long-term knowledge across encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Serial position effect
Modality effect
Recall test
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Purpose The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the new Cognitive Spare Capacity Test (CSCT), which measures aspects of working memory capacity for heard speech in the audiovisual and auditory-only modalities of presentation. Method In Experiment 1, 20 young adults with normal hearing performed the CSCT and an independent battery of cognitive tests. In the CSCT, they listened to and recalled 2-digit numbers according to instructions inducing executive processing at 2 different memory loads. In Experiment 2, 10 participants performed a less executively demanding free recall task using the same stimuli. Results CSCT performance demonstrated an effect of memory load and was associated with independent measures of executive function and inference making but not with general working memory capacity. Audiovisual presentation was associated with lower CSCT scores but higher free recall performance scores. Conclusions CSCT is an executively challenging test of the ability to process heard speech. It captures cognitive aspects of listening related to sentence comprehension that are quantitatively and qualitatively different from working memory capacity. Visual information provided in the audiovisual modality of presentation can hinder executive processing in working memory of nondegraded speech material.
Cognitive Load
Stimulus modality
Modality (human–computer interaction)
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This article reviews the concepts of short-term memory and working memory as they are applied in contemporary cognitive psychology. Such concepts are shown to be highly relevant to language processing and language impairments. Some unresolved theoretical issues in the study of short-term and working memory are described with an emphasis on the potential ramifications of these unresolved issues for an understanding of language processing.
Long-term memory
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Recently, it was demonstrated that heard sentences containing semantically unexpected words disrupt visual-verbal serial recall more than sentences containing semantically expected words. This semantic mismatch effect did not become smaller over the course of the experiment, contrary to what has been observed with other semantic effects. This surprising finding was critically examined in the present study. In Experiment 1, unspecific habituation was investigated using a classical design and a larger number of trials compared to the original study. In Experiment 2, unspecific and specific habituation were investigated by presenting sixteen different distractor sentences in one condition and the same sentences sixteen times in the other condition. In both experiments, there was no evidence of habituation of the semantic mismatch effect. In Experiment 2, overall performance was significantly better with repeated distractor sentences as compared to different sentences, but the semantic mismatch effect remained unchanged. The disruptive effect of semantic mismatches on serial recall seems to be relatively resistant to habituation, suggesting a stable mechanism that allows to detect, and to react to, potentially meaningful information in the unattended channel.
Serial position effect
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