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Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements

Individual differences in working memory capacity have been gaining recognition as playing an important role in speech comprehension, especially in noisy environments. Using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, a recent study by Hadar and coworkers found that online spoken word recognition was sl...

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Autores principales: Nitsan, Gal, Wingfield, Arthur, Lavie, Limor, Ben-David, Boaz M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480998/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31010398
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216519839624
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author Nitsan, Gal
Wingfield, Arthur
Lavie, Limor
Ben-David, Boaz M
author_facet Nitsan, Gal
Wingfield, Arthur
Lavie, Limor
Ben-David, Boaz M
author_sort Nitsan, Gal
collection PubMed
description Individual differences in working memory capacity have been gaining recognition as playing an important role in speech comprehension, especially in noisy environments. Using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, a recent study by Hadar and coworkers found that online spoken word recognition was slowed when listeners were required to retain in memory a list of four spoken digits (high load) compared with only one (low load). In the current study, we recognized that the influence of a digit preload might be greater for individuals who have a more limited memory span. We compared participants with higher and lower memory spans on the time course for spoken word recognition by testing eye-fixations on a named object, relative to fixations on an object whose name shared phonology with the named object. Results show that when a low load was imposed, differences in memory span had no effect on the time course of preferential fixations. However, with a high load, listeners with lower span were delayed by ∼550 ms in discriminating target from sound-sharing competitors, relative to higher span listeners. This follows an assumption that the interference effect of a memory preload is not a fixed value, but rather, its effect is greater for individuals with a smaller memory span. Interestingly, span differences affected the timeline for spoken word recognition in noise, but not offline accuracy. This highlights the significance of using eye-tracking as a measure for online speech processing. Results further emphasize the importance of considering differences in cognitive capacity, even when testing normal hearing young adults.
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spelling pubmed-64809982019-04-30 Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements Nitsan, Gal Wingfield, Arthur Lavie, Limor Ben-David, Boaz M Trends Hear Pupillometry in Hearing Science Individual differences in working memory capacity have been gaining recognition as playing an important role in speech comprehension, especially in noisy environments. Using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, a recent study by Hadar and coworkers found that online spoken word recognition was slowed when listeners were required to retain in memory a list of four spoken digits (high load) compared with only one (low load). In the current study, we recognized that the influence of a digit preload might be greater for individuals who have a more limited memory span. We compared participants with higher and lower memory spans on the time course for spoken word recognition by testing eye-fixations on a named object, relative to fixations on an object whose name shared phonology with the named object. Results show that when a low load was imposed, differences in memory span had no effect on the time course of preferential fixations. However, with a high load, listeners with lower span were delayed by ∼550 ms in discriminating target from sound-sharing competitors, relative to higher span listeners. This follows an assumption that the interference effect of a memory preload is not a fixed value, but rather, its effect is greater for individuals with a smaller memory span. Interestingly, span differences affected the timeline for spoken word recognition in noise, but not offline accuracy. This highlights the significance of using eye-tracking as a measure for online speech processing. Results further emphasize the importance of considering differences in cognitive capacity, even when testing normal hearing young adults. SAGE Publications 2019-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6480998/ /pubmed/31010398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216519839624 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Pupillometry in Hearing Science
Nitsan, Gal
Wingfield, Arthur
Lavie, Limor
Ben-David, Boaz M
Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title_full Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title_fullStr Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title_full_unstemmed Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title_short Differences in Working Memory Capacity Affect Online Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements
title_sort differences in working memory capacity affect online spoken word recognition: evidence from eye movements
topic Pupillometry in Hearing Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480998/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31010398
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216519839624
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