ABSTRACT
A series of five experiments explore the influence of articulatory suppression on immediate memory for auditorily presented items with a view to testing the revised concept of an articulatory loop. The concept of a unitary short-term memory system was subsequently questioned by Baddeley and Hitch, who suggested that it should be replaced by a multi-component working memory. The loop was assumed to hold about 1.5 sec of speech-based material in temporary storage and to be capable of maintaining this by means of articulatory rehearsal. Three variables were manipulated in Experiment 1: the phonological similarity of the material, the rate of presentation and articulatory suppression. The revised model makes a distinction between a phonological store and an articulatory rehearsal process. Material can be registered in the store in two ways, either through articulatory rehearsal, an optional process, or via auditory presentation, a process that leads to obligatory registration.
