Presentation at 2006 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society

Short-term memory for spectrally and temporally complex sounds:
Comparing apples to apples

K. Visscher1,M. J. Kahana2 R. Sekuler1
1Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham MA
2Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

The auditory and visual systems share common constraints and processing goals, and may thus perform many of the same operations on their respective input streams. To compare processing involved in short term memory for auditory and visual stimuli, we used Sternberg's (1966) recognition memory paradigm and 'moving ripple sounds' -- broad band stimuli that vary sinusoidally in time and frequency content (Shamma, 2001). These easily manipulated sounds are especially interesting as they are spectrally and temporally similar to speech, but are resistant to rehearsal. These stimuli and the memory task in which we studied them allowed detailed comparisons of auditory memory and memory for Gabor patches, a visual analogue to ripple sounds.

Short-term memory for moving ripple sounds was compared to memory for Gabor patches, examining effects of (1) homogeneity of items in each study list, (2) similarity of the list items to the probe, (3) number of items in the list, (4) serial position in the list, and (5) delay between stimulus and probe.

In most respects, auditory and visual memory exhibit striking parallels: all effects examined were similar for auditory and visual memory, although delay appeared to degrade auditory memory slightly more than visual memory. Comparing memory for analogous auditory and visual stimuli, our results indicate that short-term memory processing is largely similar across modality.

Supported by NIH grants MH068404 and T32 NS07292.