Laboratory for Hearing and Cognition, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Oct 8;67(10):3748-3761. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00655. Epub 2024 Sep 25.
Greater recognition of the impact of hearing loss on cognitive functions has led speech/hearing clinics to focus more on auditory memory outcomes. Typically evaluated by scoring participants' recall on a list of unrelated words after they have heard the list read out loud, this method implies pitch and timing variations across words. Here, we questioned whether these variations could impact performance differentially in one language or another.
In a series of online studies evaluating auditory short-term memory in normally hearing adults, we examined how pitch patterns (Experiment 1), timing patterns (Experiment 2), and interactions between the two (Experiment 3) affected free recall of words, cued recall of forgotten words, and mental demand. Note that visual memory was never directly tested; written words were only used after auditory encoding in the cued recall part. Studies were administered in both French and English, always conducted with native listeners.
Confirming prior work, grouping mechanisms facilitated free recall, but not cued recall (the latter being only affected by longer presentation time) or ratings of mental demand. Critically, grouping by pitch provided more benefit for French than for English listeners, while grouping by time was equally beneficial in both languages.
Pitch is more useful to French- than to English-speaking listeners for encoding spoken words in short-term memory, perhaps due to the syllable-based versus stress-based rhythms inherent to each language.
听力损失对认知功能的影响得到了更多的认识，这导致言语/听力诊所更加关注听觉记忆的结果。通常通过对参与者在听到大声朗读的列表后回忆不相关单词的分数来评估这种方法，这意味着单词之间存在音高和时间变化。在这里，我们质疑这些变化是否会以不同的方式影响一种或另一种语言的表现。
在一系列评估正常听力成年人听觉短期记忆的在线研究中，我们研究了音高模式（实验 1）、时间模式（实验 2）以及两者之间的相互作用（实验 3）如何影响单词的自由回忆、遗忘单词的提示回忆以及心理需求。请注意，从未直接测试视觉记忆；在提示回忆部分，只有在听觉编码后才使用书面单词。这些研究在法语和英语中都进行了，始终由母语为英语的听众进行。
与之前的工作一致，分组机制促进了自由回忆，但不促进提示回忆（后者仅受较长呈现时间的影响）或心理需求的评分。至关重要的是，音高分组对法语听众的帮助大于对英语听众的帮助，而时间分组对两种语言都同样有益。
对于将口语单词编码到短期记忆中，音高对说法语的听众比说英语的听众更有用，这可能是因为每种语言都固有地基于音节的节奏与基于重音的节奏。
