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In this experiment, we examined the degree to which four implicit tests and two explicit tests, all involving auditory presentation, were sensitive to the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli presented during study. Presenting stimuli visually decreased priming in all the implicit memory tests, relative to auditory presentation. However, changing voice between study and test decreased priming only in the implicit memory tests requiring identification of words degraded by noise or by low-pass filtering, but not in those tests requiring generation from word portions (stems and fragments). Modality effects without voice effects were observed in cued recall, but the opposite pattern of results (voice effects without modality effects) was obtained in recognition. The primary new finding is the demonstration that auditory memory tests, both explicit and implicit, differ in their sensitivity to the perceptual information encoded during study.A primary concern in implicit memory research is the degree to which implicit memory tests are dependent on the perceptual characteristics of the information encoded during study. Perceptual or data-driven implicit memory tests tap into recent experiences incidentally (i.e., in the absence ofinstructions to recollect) by requiring subjects to identify stimuli that have undergone some form ofdegradation. Most research in this area has used implicit tests that employ verbal materials presented in a visual format. For example, subjects who have recently read the word window might be asked, in an ostensibly unrelated task, to complete a word stem (win_) or fragment (w_n_o_) with the first word to come to mind (word stem completion and word fragment completion) or to identify a word degraded by a mask (perceptual identification). In each case, priming is defined as subjects' identifying or completing previously studied words more often than nonstudied words.In general, visual implicit tests like those described above are sensitive to study-to-test changes in the perceptual characteristics of the studied words. For instance, Rajaram and Roediger (1993) found that four implicit memory tests (perceptual identification, word stem and fragment completion, and anagram solution) showed a decrement in priming following study-to-test changes in salient perceptual dimensions, such as modality of presentation (auditory study and visual test) and format (picture study and verbal test; see, also, Weldon, 1991).We thank Mark Yen for his help in conducting the experiments and Sandy Hale and Erik Bergman for recording the stimuli. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to M. Pi lotti, Department of Psychology, Washington University, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1125, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 (e-mail: mpilotti@ artsci.wustl.edu).In the last several years, researchers have extended the study of implicit memory to the auditory domain. Thus, a number of auditory implicit tests have been developed that are analogous to visual implicit tests: auditory perceptual identification (Ch...

Can a brief exposure to nature at the end of a workday enhance sustained attention and long-term memory? Student advisors viewed a video of either a natural environment or a busy city street after work. Then they performed a tone-detection task that was intended to mimic a key feature of their job (being on the telephone). After the nature video, systolic blood pressure increased and response latencies remained stable across time. After the city video, systolic blood pressure remained unchanged from baseline, whereas response latencies increased over time. Self-reports of arousal and emotional state did not differ significantly between videos, whereas memory of the experimental setting was better after viewing the nature video. In sum, a brief contact with nature at the end of a workday may give an individual vigor to complete additional tasks but not improve his or her affect.

A decrement in the strength of the meaning of a word after rapid repetition of that word has been called "semantic satiation." This study asked whether this "satiation" might be produced by presemantic acoustic adaptation. Category words were utilized to prime the meaning of target words. The adaptation or "satiation" procedure, 30 rapid repetitions of the primes, was compared with a control condition of 3 repetitions. Participants listened to a series of prime words, each repeated by either the same speaker or many speakers, and then made semantic decisions on target words. When all the repetitions of a prime word are produced by the same speaker, presemantic and semantic repetitions are confounded. When the repetitions are produced by different speakers, presemantic acoustic repetition is abolished. A semantic decrement was detected with single-speaker, but not with multiple-speaker, repetitions of prime words. This study conduded that the semantic "satiation" observed here was a decrement in the activation level of semantic representations induced by presemantic acoustic adaptation.A temporary decrement in the strength of the meaning ofa word after rapid repetition ofthat word has been called semantic satiation. This study examines whether this "satiation" is produced by presemantic acoustic adaptation.If a person repeats a word rapidly by saying it aloud

The authors examined whether the beneficial effect of text familiarity on proofreading is dependent on the type of encoding operations performed on the text prior to proofreading (i.e., surface vs. deep), and on the time elapsed between encoding and proofreading. In the present study, familiarity, irrespective of the nature of the encoding operations and delay, improved proofreading times, whereas only surface encoding made proofreading more accurate. These results represent a challenge for the transfer-appropriate processing model of memory.