What is the level of precision of phonological representations in working memory?

The precision with which verbal information is represented in working memory (WM) is a debated question. Some studies suggest that verbal WM precision is limited to abstract phonological levels of representation while other studies, using specifically designed paradigms, indicate that information ca...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 54; no. 2; pp. 563 - 586
Autores principales: Bouffier, Marion, Remouchamps, Robin, Majerus, Steve
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Feb2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: What is the level of precision of phonological representations in working memory?
      aug:
        au:
          Bouffier, Marion
          Remouchamps, Robin
          Majerus, Steve
        affil:
          https://ror.org/00afp2z80 University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
          https://ror.org/01swzsf04 Neurobiology of Concepts Expression (NoCE) Research Unit, University of Geneva, Chemin des mines, 9, 1202, Geneva, Switzerland
      su:
        Task performance
        Linguistics
        Analysis of variance
        Phonetics
        Repeated measures design
        T-test (Statistics)
        Research funding
        Consonants
        Audiometry
        Descriptive statistics
        Experimental design
        Speech evaluation
        Short-term memory
        Speech perception
        Data analysis software
      sug:
        subj:
          Task performance
          Linguistics
          Analysis of variance
          Phonetics
          Repeated measures design
          T-test (Statistics)
          Research funding
          Consonants
          Audiometry
          Descriptive statistics
          Experimental design
          Speech evaluation
          Short-term memory
          Speech perception
          Data analysis software
      keyword:
        Auditory-verbal working memory
        Phonology
        Precision
        Auditory-verbal working memory
        Phonology
        Precision
      ab: The precision with which verbal information is represented in working memory (WM) is a debated question. Some studies suggest that verbal WM precision is limited to abstract phonological levels of representation while other studies, using specifically designed paradigms, indicate that information can reach phonetic-level precision. The present study investigated at which linguistic level verbal WM operates by default, by probing memory for phonological versus phonetic information in a non-word WM paradigm. In three experiments, we presented non-word lists followed by a non-word probe, with negative probes differing from targets by a single phoneme. This phoneme was either a phonetic variant of the target (e.g., /t/ - /t*/), a phonologically close phoneme (e.g., /t/ – /d/) or a phonologically distant phoneme (e.g., /t/ – /v/). In the three experiments, we observed reliable rejection of negative probes differing by a phonologically distant phoneme, while rejection of negative probes differing by either a phonologically close phoneme or a phonetic variant was much less robust. This study shows that verbal WM preferentially involves phonological levels of representation, and with limited precision at this level.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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