Effects of subvocal suppression, articulating aloud and noise on sequence recall

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Abstract
Subjects (human) were required to reproduce in order a sequence of 5 letters; the set of letters was known so only memory for sequence was tested. Experiment (exp) 1 showed that suppressing subvocal rehearsal by saying "the" continuously during list presentation and until recall depressed performance to the same level on acoustically confusable and non-confusable lists. Listening of 85 dBC white noise during list presentation improved performance on acoustically confusable lists in non-suppression conditions and had no effect in suppression conditions. The result refutes the hypothesis that noise suppresses inner speech. Exp 2, 3 and 4 showed that articulating the items aloud during list presentation and until recall improved performance when lists were presented at 1/2 S/item and depressed it when they were presented at 2 s/item. Improvement occurred under 85 dBC white noise in exp 2 and 4, but the improvement was only significant in non-articulation conditions. Apparently noise increases subvocal articulation and noise and articulation increase maintenance rehearsal at the expense of elaboration rehearsal.

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