The phonological store construct of the working memory model is critically evaluated. Three experiments test the prediction that the effect of irrelevant sound and the effect of phonological similarity each survive the action of articulatory suppression but only when presentation of to-be-remembered lists is auditory, not visual. No evidence was found to support the interaction predicted among irrelevant speech, modality, and articulatory suppression. Although evidence for an interaction among modality, phonological similarity, and articulatory suppression was found, its presence could be diminished by a suffix, which is an acoustic, not a phonological factor. Coupled with other evidence--from the irrelevant sound effect and errors in natural speech--the action attributed to the phonological store seems better described in terms of a combination of auditory-perceptual and output planning mechanisms.

(2001) have argued that attention is crucial for auditory streaming. The authors review R. P. Carlyon et al.'s (2001) arguments and suggest that a pertinent literature, the irrelevant sound paradigm-demonstrating preattentive auditory streaming-has been overlooked. In illustration of this alternative approach, the authors include a novel single experiment demonstrating the impact of preattentive auditory streaming on short-term serial memory. It is concluded that R. P. Carlyon et al.'s (2001) results do not definitively demonstrate that auditory streaming processes are dependent on attention; indeed, they are compatible with alternative accounts of the relationship between perceptual organization and attention.

Memory for order is markedly impaired by the presence of irrelevant sound, even though participants are instructed to ignore the sound. Although a great deal of research has disclosed some features of the task and of the sound that augment or reduce the degree of interference, one important issue of the irrelevant sound effect not yet resolved is whether speech has a special status. This study revealed, within a design of adequate power, that the same physical stimulus (sine wave speech), whether perceived as speech or as nonspeech sound, produces similar degrees of disruption and is less disruptive of serial recall than natural speech. This outcome suggests that the acoustic constituents of sound rather than its source are most influential in determining the impact of irrelevant material.

Adding an irrelevant item to the end of an auditory to-be-remembered list increases error on the last list items appreciably, known as the suffix effect. The phenomenon of auditory capture (e.g., Bregman & Rudnicky, 1975), namely, the tendency for a sequence of similar items to form a stream that at the same time isolates perceptually dissimilar members of the sequence, is exploited to explore the suffix effect. Irrelevant items interleaved between to-be-remembered items are used to capture the suffix with the aim of reducing its impact. Four experiments illustrate how the properties of the irrelevant sequence promote capture. The results are problematic for models of the suffix that involve masking of the last list item; instead, models based on grouping are favored.

In 2 experiments, the authors tested whether the classical modality effect-that is, the stronger recency effect for auditory items relative to visual items-can be extended to the spatial domain. An order reconstruction task was undertaken with four types of material: visual-spatial, auditory-spatial, visual-verbal, and auditory-verbal. Similar serial position curves were obtained regardless of the nature of the to-be-remembered sequences, with the exception that a modality effect was found with spatial as well as with verbal materials. The results are discussed with regard to a number of models of short-term memory.