Articulation and verbal short-term memory: Evidence from anarthria

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Abstract
The role of articulation in verbal short-term memory was investigated in two patients suffering from a selective and total impairment of overt articulation. Case GF was totally speechless due to a ventral pontine lesion and case MDC due to bilateral anterior opercular softenings. Both patients had normal auditory comprehension, a digit span performance within the normal range, and displayed the standard effect of phonological similarity in immediate memory performance with auditory material. This pattern of results suggests that a total impairment of overt articulation, occurring in adult age, does not disrupt the function of the phonological short-term store component of working memory. These conclusions are consistent with the view that a phonological nonarticulatory input short-term storage system is a main functional component involved in auditory span performance. Finally, while GF's phonological processing of visual material was unaffected, in MDC's case a defective phonological recoding of visual information was shown. This differential pattern of impairment suggests that a defective function of the phonological recoding component may prevent access by visually presented material to an unimpaired rehearsal process. A model comprising an input phonological short-term store, an articulatory rehearsal loop, and a phonological recoding process component is discussed.