Comprehension of Morse Code Predicted by Item Recall From Short-Term Memory

Purpose Morse code as a form of communication became widely used for telegraphy, radio and maritime communication, and military operations, and remains popular with ham radio operators. Some skilled users of Morse code are able to comprehend a full sentence as they listen to it, while others must first transcribe the sentence into its written letter sequence. Morse thus provides an interesting opportunity to examine comprehension differences in the context of skilled acoustic perception. Measures of comprehension and short-term memory show a strong correlation across multiple forms of communication. This study tests whether this relationship holds for Morse and investigates its underlying basis. Our analyses examine Morse and speech immediate serial recall, focusing on established markers of echoic storage, phonological-articulatory coding, and lexical-semantic support. We show a relationship between Morse short-term memory and Morse comprehension that is not explained by Morse perceptual fluency. In addition, we find that poorer serial recall for Morse compared to speech is primarily due to poorer item memory for Morse, indicating differences in lexical-semantic support. Interestingly, individual differences in speech item memory are also predictive of individual differences in Morse comprehension. Conclusions We point to a psycholinguistic framework to account for these results, concluding that Morse functions like “reading for the ears” ( Maier et al., 2004 ) and that underlying differences in the integration of phonological and lexical-semantic knowledge impact both short-term memory and comprehension. The results provide insight into individual differences in the comprehension of degraded speech and strategies that build comprehension through listening experience. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16451868

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Short-term memory in children with Williams syndrome: A reduced contribution of lexical-semantic knowledge to word span

Neuropsychologia ◽

10.1016/0028-3932(96)00007-3 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 34 (9) ◽

pp. 919-925 ◽

Cited By ~ 59

Author(s):

S Vicari

Keyword(s):

Williams Syndrome ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Semantic Knowledge ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Lexical Semantic ◽

Lexical Semantic Knowledge

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Supplemental Material for Individual Differences in Verbal Short-Term Memory and Reading Aloud: Semantic Compensation for Weak Phonological Processing Across Tasks

Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition ◽

10.1037/xlm0000675.supp ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Phonological Processing ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Reading Aloud ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory

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Individual differences in multiple cues guiding flexible resource allocation in visual short-term memory.

10.31234/osf.io/hsvp8 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Holly Lockhart ◽

Blaire Dube ◽

Kevin John MacDonald ◽

Naseem Al-Aidroos ◽

Stephen Emrich

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Spatial Cues ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Visual Short Term Memory ◽

Presentation Time ◽

Flexible Resource ◽

Priority Levels ◽

Level Analysis

Although recent evidence suggests that visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a continuous resource, little is known about how flexibly this resource can be allocated. Previous studies using probabilistic cues to indicate two different levels of probe probability have found that response precision can be predicted according to a continuous allocation of resources that depends on attentional priority. The current study used a continuous report procedure and attentional prioritization via simultaneous probabilistic spatial cues to address whether participants can use up to three levels of attentional priority to allocate VSTM resources. Three experiments were performed with differing priority levels, different cues, and cue presentation time. Although group level analysis demonstrated flexible allocation, there was limited evidence that participants were using three priority levels. An individual differences approach revealed that a minority of participants were using three levels of attentional priority, demonstrating that, while possible, it is not the predominant pattern of behavior.

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Retroactive Effects of Irrelevant Sound on Serial Recall from Short-Term Memory of Chinese Characters

Acta Psychologica Sinica ◽

10.3724/sp.j.1041.2013.00626 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 626-635

Author(s):

Defang MU ◽

Yaowu SONG ◽

Jiangfeng GAO

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Irrelevant Sound

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Effect of Perceiving Computing to Be an Acquirable Skill upon a Computer-Mediated Serial Recall Task

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.100.2.354-356 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 100 (2) ◽

pp. 354-356 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

M. J. Brosnan

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Recall Task ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Computer Mediated ◽

Serial Recall Task ◽

Computer Based ◽

Pencil And Paper ◽

Traditional Assessments

Serial recall tasks assess the capacity of verbal short-term memory. The perception of computing as an acquirable skill rather than a fixed ability affected performance upon computer-based serial recall tasks but did not affect performance on comparable pencil-and-paper tasks. Computerized versions of traditional assessments should control for this.

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Cross-linguistic differences in the immediate serial recall of consonants versus vowels

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s014271641100049x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 605-621 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

ELIZABETH M. KISSLING

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

First Language ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Immediate Serial Recall ◽

Arabic Speakers ◽

Native Arabic Speakers ◽

Native Speakers Of English ◽

Arabic And English

ABSTRACTThe current study investigated native English and native Arabic speakers’ phonological short-term memory for sequences of consonants and vowels. Phonological short-term memory was assessed in immediate serial recall tasks conducted in Arabic and English for both groups. Participants (n= 39) heard series of six consonant–vowel syllables and wrote down what they recalled. Native speakers of English recalled the vowel series better than consonant series in English and in Arabic, which was not true of native Arabic speakers. An analysis of variance showed that there was an interaction between first language and phoneme type. The results are discussed in light of current research on consonant and vowel processing.

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Correlated individual differences suggest a common mechanism underlying metacognition in visual perception and visual short-term memory

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2017.2035 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 284 (1867) ◽

pp. 20172035 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Jason Samaha ◽

Bradley R. Postle

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Visual Perception ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Adaptive Behaviour ◽

Common Mechanism ◽

Stimulus Feature ◽

Relevant Stimulus ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Visual Short Term Memory

Adaptive behaviour depends on the ability to introspect accurately about one's own performance. Whether this metacognitive ability is supported by the same mechanisms across different tasks is unclear. We investigated the relationship between metacognition of visual perception and metacognition of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Experiments 1 and 2 required subjects to estimate the perceived or remembered orientation of a grating stimulus and rate their confidence. We observed strong positive correlations between individual differences in metacognitive accuracy between the two tasks. This relationship was not accounted for by individual differences in task performance or average confidence, and was present across two different metrics of metacognition and in both experiments. A model-based analysis of data from a third experiment showed that a cross-domain correlation only emerged when both tasks shared the same task-relevant stimulus feature. That is, metacognition for perception and VSTM were correlated when both tasks required orientation judgements, but not when the perceptual task was switched to require contrast judgements. In contrast with previous results comparing perception and long-term memory, which have largely provided evidence for domain-specific metacognitive processes, the current findings suggest that metacognition of visual perception and VSTM is supported by a domain-general metacognitive architecture, but only when both domains share the same task-relevant stimulus feature.

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Evaluating the Evidence for a Dissociation Between Speech and Emotion Effects in Short-Term Memory

10.31234/osf.io/zaj7d ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Stefan Wiens

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Experimental Psychology ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Hypothesis Tests ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Emotional Words ◽

Missing Item

Marsh et al. (2018, Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 44, 882-897) reported finding a dissociation between the effects of serial recall tasks and those of a missing-item task on the disruptive effects of speech and of emotional words, as predicted by the duplex-mechanism account. Critically, the reported analyses did not test specifically for this dissociation. To address this issue, I re-analyzed the Marsh et al. data and added Bayesian hypothesis tests to measure the strength of the evidence for a dissociation. This commentary is submitted to Meta-Psychology.

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