The Importance of Semantic Similarity to the Irrelevant Speech Effect

Overview

Journal Mem Cognit

Specialty Psychology

Date 1999 Mar 24

PMID 10087854

Citations 19

Authors

C B Neely

D C Lecompte

Affiliations

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Abstract

Irrelevant speech disrupts immediate recall of a short sequence of items. Salamé and Baddeley (1982) found a very small and nonsignificant increase in the irrelevant speech effect when the speech comprised items semantically identical to the to-be-remembered items, leading subsequent researchers to conclude that semantic similarity plays no role in the irrelevant speech effect. Experiment 1 showed that strong free associates of the to-be-remembered items disrupted serial recall to a greater extent than words that were dissimilar to the to-be-remembered items. Experiment 2 showed that this same pattern of disruption in a free recall task. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Citing Articles

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party.

Har-Shai Yahav P, Zion Golumbic E Elife. 2021; 10.

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The Dynamics of Attention Shifts Among Concurrent Speech in a Naturalistic Multi-speaker Virtual Environment.

Shavit-Cohen K, Zion Golumbic E Front Hum Neurosci. 2019; 13:386.

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Acoustic Detail But Not Predictability of Task-Irrelevant Speech Disrupts Working Memory.

Wostmann M, Obleser J Front Hum Neurosci. 2016; 10:538.

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Variation in strategy use across measures of verbal working memory.

Morrison A, Rosenbaum G, Fair D, Chein J Mem Cognit. 2016; 44(6):922-36.

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Negative priming in free recall reconsidered.

Hanczakowski M, Beaman C, Jones D J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2015; 42(5):686-99.

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