The effects of auditory and visual interference on the immediate recall of melody

Abstract

College-age subjects recalled melodies or spoken sentences immediately after hearing them, by either pointing on a chart designed to interfere with a visual memory code or saying the equivalent responses, which should interfere with an auditory code. Pointing took significantly longer than saying for melodies, but not for sentences. A second experiment showed that this task x materials interaction could be due to interference with contour per se rather than with visual coding of melody, because a similar effect was found for spoken contours consisting simply of the words "up" or "down." In a third experiment, pointing and saying tasks were modified both to control and to manipulate the amount of contour interference. Visual control stimuli for melodies were introduced, employing a marker that moved up or down. This time the task x materials interaction could be explained in terms of an auditory memory code for melody, but there were some problems with this interpretation. Interference related to contour, rather than to a specific modality, appeared to account best for the results of all three experiments. © 1985 Psychonomic Society, Inc.