A visuospatial “phonological loop” in working memory: Evidence from American Sign Language

• Published in: Memory & cognition Vol. 25; no. 3; pp. 313 - 320
• Main Authors: Wilson, Margaret, Emmorey, Karen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin, TX Psychonomic Society 01.05.1997; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; American Sign Language; Analysis of Variance; Biological and medical sciences; Eyes & eyesight; Form Perception; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Hearing Disorders; Human; Humans; Learning. Memory; Memory; Memory - physiology; Phonetics; Phonological Processing; Phonology; Proprioception; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Recall; Sensory perception; Serial Learning; Short Term Memory; Sign Language; Visual Perception; Human; Sign language; Phonological loop; American Sign Language; Vision; Cognition; Working memory; Joint; Visuospatial sketchpad; Spatial memory
• ISSN: 0090-502X; 1532-5946
• DOI: 10.3758/BF03211287

In two experiments, the question of whether working memory could support an articulatory rehearsal loop in the visuospatial domain was investigated. Deaf subjects fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) were tested on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, with ASL stimuli, evidence was found for manual motoric coding (worse recall under articulatory suppression) and previous findings of ASL-based phonological coding (worse recall for phonologically similar lists) were replicated [corrected]. The two effects did not interact, suggesting separate components which both contribute to performance. Stimuli in Experiment 2 were namable pictures, which had to be recoded for ASL-based rehearsal to occur. Under these conditions, articulatory suppression eliminated the phonological similarity effect. Thus, an articulatory process seems to be used in translating pictures into a phonological code for memory maintenance. These results indicate a configuration of components similar to the phonological loop for speech, suggesting that working memory can develop a language-based rehearsal loop in the visuospatial modality.