Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What Is the Role of Tone in the Phonological Similarity Effect?

  • Original Article
  • Published:
The Psychological Record Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

To recall a list of phonologically similar words is more difficult than to recall a list of phonologically dissimilar words; this is the well-known phonological similarity effect in verbal working memory. However, it is hypothesized that not all phonological aspects of a word would create the phonological similarity interference in verbal working memory. The present study examines the influence of different phonological characteristics of the to-be-memorized items on participants’ recall performance. Convergent results from two experiments revealed the phonological similarity effect was less evident with same tone materials. These results are discussed in terms of the role of tone in the phonological similarity effect in verbal working memory.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baddeley, A. D. (1966). Short-term memory for word sequences as a function of acoustic, semantic and visual similarity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 362–365.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baddeley, A. D. (1992). Working memory. Science, 255, 556–559.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, R. S., & Benedict, P. K. (1997). Modern Cantonese phonology. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bower, G. H. (1970). Organizational factors in memory. Cognitive Psychology, 1, 18–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chase, W. G., & Calfee, R. C. (1969). Modality and similarity effects in short-term recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 510–514.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, H.-C., & Yip, M. C. W. (2001). Processing syllabic and sub-syllabic information in Cantonese. Journal of Psychology in Chinese Societies, 2, 199–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J. D., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: a new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 25, 257–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, V. (1993). Effects of phonological similarity and concurrent irrelevant articulation on short-term memory recall of repeated and novel word lists. Memory & Cognition, 21, 539–545.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conrad, R., & Hull, A. J. (1964). Information, acoustic confusion, and memory span. British Journal of Psychology, 55, 429–432.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Copeland, D. E., & Radvansky, G. A. (2001). Phonological similarity in working memory. Memory & Cognition, 29, 774–776.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Craik, F. I. (1968). Two components in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 7, 996–1004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fallon, A. B., Groves, K., & Tehan, G. (1999). Phonological similarity and trace degradation in the serial recall task: when CAT helps RAT, but not MAN. International Journal of Psychology, 34, 301–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frankish, C. (1995). Intonation and auditory grouping in immediate serial recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 5–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta, P., & MacWhinney, B. (1997). Vocabulary acquisition and verbal short-term memory: computational and neural bases. Brain and Language, 59, 267–333.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hartley, T., & Houghton, G. (1996). A linguistically constrained model of short-term memory for nonwords. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 1–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ho, H.-H., & Jiang, Y.-H. (1994). Word frequency in Hong Kong in the 90’s. Hong Kong: Research Institute of Humanities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kao, D. (1971). Structure of the syllable in Cantonese. The Hague: Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karlsen, P. J., & Lian, A. (2005). Modulating the phonological similarity effect: the contribution of interlist similarity and lexicality. Memory & Cognition, 33, 542–556.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kilgour, A. R., Jakobson, L. S., & Cuddy, L. L. (2000). Music training and rate of presentation as mediator of text and song recall. Memory & Cognition, 28, 700–710.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • LaPointe, L. B., & Engle, R. W. (1990). Simple and complex word spans as measures of working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 1118–1133.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, I.-M., Wu, J.-T., Sue, I.-R., Chen, S.-C. (2006). Phonological mediation in visual word recognition in English and Chinese. In P. Li, L. H. Tan, E. Bates, O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.), Handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics (vol. 1: Chinese, pp. 218–224). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  • MacAndrew, D. K., Klatzky, R. L., Fiez, J. A., McClelland, J. L., & Becker, J. T. (2002). The phonological-similarity effect differentiates between two working memory tasks. Psychological Science, 13, 465–468.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, R. C., Lesch, M. F., & Bartha, M. C. (1999). Independence of input and output phonology in word processing and short-term memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 3–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nairne, J. S. (1990). A feature model of immediate memory. Memory & Cognition, 18, 251–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nairne, J. S., & Kelley, M. R. (1999). Reversing the phonological similarity effect. Memory & Cognition, 27, 45–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nimmo, L. M., & Roodenrys, S. (2004). Investigating the phonological similarity effect: syllable structure and the position of common phonemes. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 245–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saint-Aubin, J., & Poirier, M. (1999). Semantic similarity and immediate serial recall: is there a detrimental effect on order information? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 52A, 367–394.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saint-Aubin, J., Ouellette, D., & Poirier, M. (2005). Semantic similarity and immediate serial recall: is there an effect on all trials? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 171–177.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Saito, S. (1998). Effects of articulatory suppression on immediate serial recall of temporarily grouped and intonated lists. Psychologia, 41, 95–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searleman, A., & Herrmann, D. (1994). Memory from a broader perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Serafine, M. L., Crowder, R. G., & Repp, B. H. (1984). Integration of melody and text in memory for songs. Cognition, 16, 285–303.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Serafine, M. L., Davidson, J., Crowder, R. G., & Repp, B. (1986). On the nature of melody: text integration in memory for songs. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 123–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sevald, C. A., & Dell, G. S. (1994). The sequential cuing effect in speech production. Cognition, 53, 91–127.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sevald, C. A., Dell, G. S., & Cole, J. S. (1995). Syllable structure in speech production: are syllables chunks or schemas? Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 807–820.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Slowiaczek, L. M., McQueen, J. M., Soltano, E. G., & Lynch, M. (2000). Phonological representations in prelexical speech processing: evidence from form-based priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 530–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Cutler, A. (2001). Segmental and suprasegmental cues for lexical access in Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 412–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Surprenant, A. M., Neath, I., & LeCompte, D. C. (1999). Irrelevant speech, phonological similarity, and presentation modality. Memory, 7, 405–420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tehan, G., & Fallon, A. B. (1999). A connectionist model of short-term cued recall. In J. Wiles & T. Dartnell (Eds.), Prospectives in cognitive science (pp. 221–237). Stamford: Ablex.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R., & Danis, C. (1988). Short-term memory errors for spoken syllables are affected by the linguistic structure of the syllable. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 145–152.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Van Ooijen, B. (1996). Vowel mutability and lexical selection in English: evidence from a word reconstruction task. Memory & Cognition, 24, 573–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilding, J., & Mohindra, D. (1980). Effects of subvocal suppression, articulating aloud and noise on sequence. British Journal of Psychology, 71, 247–261.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, Y. (1991). Depth of phonological recoding in short-term memory. Memory & Cognition, 19, 263–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Y.-F. (1997). Prosodic cues to syntactic boundaries. Acta Acustica, 22, 414–421.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. C. W. (2000). Spoken word recognition of Chinese homophones: the role of context and tone neighbors. Psychologia, 43, 135–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. C. W. (2001). Phonological priming in Cantonese spoken-word processing. Psychologia, 44, 223–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. (2002). Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. C. W. (2004a). Interference effects of possible-word constraints (PWC) in Cantonese speech segmentation. Psychologia, 47, 169–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. C. W. (2004b). Possible-word constraints in Cantonese speech segmentation. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 33, 165–173.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yip, M. C. W. (2007). Processing of segmental and tonal information of Chinese syllables. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 105, 405–410.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, X., Qu, Y., Shu, H., Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2004). Constraints of lexical tone on semantic activation in Chinese spoken word recognition. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 36, 379–392.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Carol Chan for her assistance in the present study and the constructive comments from Gerry Tehan and an anonymous reviewer.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Studies, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong SAR

    Michael C. W. Yip

Authors
  1. Michael C. W. Yip
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael C. W. Yip.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Yip, M.C.W. What Is the Role of Tone in the Phonological Similarity Effect?. Psychol Rec 64, 115–122 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-014-0019-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-014-0019-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation