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Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Influence Spoken Word Recognition

Szostak, Christine
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1365177772

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Psychology.
Prior work has shown that when speech is unclear, listeners show a greater dependence upon semantic than on acoustic information to aid word identification when distracting stimuli (e.g., other talkers) are present. The current project extended this work to explore whether individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) would influence the likelihood that listeners will depend on the biasing information when distracted. In five experiments, participants heard sentences that contained an early target word with or without noise at its onset and a subsequent word that was semantically biased in favor of the target word or one of its lexical competitors (e.g., The wing had an exquisite set of feathers or The wing had an exquisite set of diamonds where diamonds would be semantically associated with ring). The sentences were presented in the presence of distracters ranging in their degree of signal-similarity to that of the sentence (e.g., another speaker vs. an everyday nonspeech sound). Participants made target word identification and sentence sensibility judgments for each sentence they heard. The findings showed that those with lower WMC were more likely to depend upon biasing than on acoustic signal information, but only when the signal was masked by noise. In contrast, those with higher WMC showed less dependence upon the biasing information than those with lower WMC, even when the signal was masked by noise. Although performance across distracter similarity was not influenced by WMC, the likelihood of being able to anticipate what distraction would be heard was shown to influence performance as a function of WMC. A discussion of the role of WMC in spoken word recognition, especially during distraction, is provided and the potential mechanisms involved in this process are considered.
Pitt Mark, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Per Sederberg, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Simon Dennis, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Eric Healy, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
126 p.
Acoustics; Behaviorial Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Language; Linguistics; Psychology
spoken word recognition; working memory capacity; subsequent context; dichotic listening; individual differences

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Szostak, C. (2013). Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Influence Spoken Word Recognition [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1365177772

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Szostak, Christine. Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Influence Spoken Word Recognition. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1365177772.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Szostak, Christine. "Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Influence Spoken Word Recognition." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1365177772

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1365177772
497
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.