Intrasyllabic articulatory control constraints in verbal working memory

Verbal transformation effect – an auditory imagery task equivalent to Necker's cube in visual imagery – recruits a specific working memory, the so-called articulatory or phonological loop. Is this mechanism sensitive to articulatory control constraints, i.e. phase relationships between vowel and consonant gestures? In our experiment, 56 French students repeatedly pronounced aloud non-sense syllables – all combinations of [ ́] with [p] and [s] – and were asked to stop as soon as they heard a possible syllable transformation. In agreement with our in-phase predictions, the winner is syllable [ps ́], where all gestures can be launched in synchrony. This experiment demonstrates that verbal working memory – a primary candidate as input memory for word learning – is sensitive to articulatory control of syllable phasing. 1. VERBAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE PHONOLOGICAL LOOP In a set of experiments exploring auditory imagery, Reisberg et al. [Rei89] examined the imagery analogue of the verbal transformation effect [War58]-[War61]. This word game [Tre83] relies on the fact that certain words, if repeated over and over, yield a sound stream compatible with more than one segmentation (e.g. rapid repetitions of the word “life” produce a sound stream fully compatible with the perception that either “life” or “fly” is being repeated). This effect corresponds, in speech, to the depth perceptual rivalry in the Necker’s cube [Cha85]. In their experiment, the authors asked subjects to repeat different stimuli and to detect a possible transformation – the conditions varying by degrees between overt and covert repetition (from loud speech to mental repetition). The authors show that the transformation probability gradually decreases as vocalization declines from one condition to the other, with less and less possibility of “enaction”. They relate enaction to the so-called “phonological loop”, the verbal component of Baddeley’s working memory model [Bad86]. As known, the phonological loop is supposed to involve two distinct components : a phonological store – the “inner-ear” – and a subvocal rehearsal process – the “inner-voice”. In this model, the phonological store is assumed to represent verbal material in a phonological form while the process of subvocal rehearsal aims at “re-enacting” this material, re-presenting it to the store and thus refreshing and preserving its content [Bad90][Bad92a]. Recent research suggests that retention of familiar verbal material should be an accidental by-product of the primary function of this system : that is, to serve language along the ac [Bad9 In proces but al discu phono An im the ex For in “life existe the sp lingua lip-tee three conso In the [f] (sy for the gestur T relate Haken consis forefin movem movem phase activa T transit non-li articul motor T speech as test seque VOT peak a syllab of the proble and g ISCA Archive