Temporal Grouping Effects in Verbal And Musical Short-term Memory: Is Serial Order Representation Domain-general? Part 4

The results reported here mirror those observed with visuospatial material and where benchmarks of temporal grouping effects were also observed, except for the increase in interposition errors (Hurlstone, 2019). 

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The authors accounted for the difference by proposing a model of serial order coding positional information in a slightly different way about the type of material. For verbal information, two-dimensional markers code group positions in the sequence and item positions within the groups. For visuospatial material, the two-dimensional markers code group and item positions in the sequence. 

A straightforward account of the results reported here would be to assume that the same positional coding scheme is used for visuospatial and musical material, but that the increase in interposition errors in grouped sequence is specific to the positional coding scheme used for verbal information. 

At the same time, the observation of interposition errors in the verbal domain is limited to a very specific context where the items are presented in a sequence of three groups of three items (e.g., Hartley et al., 2016; Henson, 1996; Hurlstone, 2019; Ng & Maybery, 2002, 2005; Ryan, 1969b). 

To the best of our knowledge, in the literature on temporal grouping effects with verbal sequences of six items (e.g., two groups of three items, see Farrell, 2008; Hitch et al., 1996; Maybery et al., 2002; Parmentier & Maybery, 2008),2 there is no study reporting an increase in interposition errors in grouped sequences. 

Consequently, inferring the nature of serial order representation in the musical domain based on the assumption that in the verbal domain grouping sequences of nine or six items in groups of three should lead to the same pattern of grouping effects may represent a shortcoming. 

Thus, it is a possibility that the absence of an increase in interposition errors with musical material is related to the use of 6-item sequences but not to the presence of different positional coding schemes between the verbal and musical domains. 

If this is the case, we should observe the same effect with verbal material as seen in the present experiment.3 To explore this possibility, we conducted an online study where participants had to recall sequences of letters in serial order where we manipulated the phonological similarity (similar vs. dissimilar) and the type of grouping (ungrouped vs. grouped).

Experiment 2: forward serial recall of verbal order

This experiment was conducted to determine whether the absence of an increase in interposition errors in musical grouped sequences observed in Experiment 1 was due to the use of 6-item sequences or due to different positional representations compared with the verbal domain. To this aim, we conducted an online experiment requiring participants to recall visually presented letter lists. 

The first half of the experiment presented participants with ungrouped sequences and the other half with grouped ones. 

Moreover, to take into account the fact that musical material performance can be negatively impacted by tonal proximity (Williamson et al., 2010), half of the trials presented sequences composed of phonologically similar (e.g., D–G–C–T–P–V) letters and the other half presented dissimilar letters (e.g., R–L–K–M–F–S).

Method

Sampling plan. This experiment was conducted during the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020. Due to organizational constraints, we had to allow all participants to take part in the study to ensure the validation of their course credits. Thus, no specific criteria were applied to prior participants who took part in this study as well. Consequently, the sampling plan consisted of letting as many students as possible take part in the study. 

The URL of the experiment was shared with the participants via a forum used in one of their first-year psychology courses. Exclusion criteria were applied only once the data collection period ended. Participants. The experiment was approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education of the University of Geneva. 

A total of 101 first-year psychology students from the University of Geneva participated in this online experiment in exchange for partial course credit. After the exclusion of 15 participants who met the exclusion criteria, the final sample was composed of 86 participants (gender: 66 females, 19 males, and 1 other; age in years: M=22.27, SD=6.03).

Exclusion criteria. We excluded participants with any learning or neurological disorder as well as those not fluent in French.

Stimuli. The stimuli consisted of 160, 6-letter sequences. Half of the sequences were composed of phonologically similar letters, drawn randomly without the replacement six letters from the pool B, C, D, G, P, T, and V. 

The other half was composed of phonologically dissimilar letters, drawn without the replacement six letters from the pool X, H, J, L, K, Q, and S. When generating the sequences, we ensured that the same letter did not occur at the same serial position in consecutive trials and that all the sequences were unique. Finally, as in the previous experiments, a new set of 180 sequences was generated for each participant. 

Procedure. Each trial started with a countdown from 3 to 1. The countdown was displayed in blue on a white background with a sans-serif font and a font size of 30. Each digit was presented in the center of the screen for a duration of 500ms, followed by a blank screen of 100ms. Immediately after the countdown, the six letters were presented sequentially in the center of the screen. 

Letters were displayed in black on a white background with a sans-serif font and using a font size of 40. Each letter was presented for a duration of 500ms, followed by a blank screen lasting for 100ms. In grouped trials, an additional pause of 500ms was added between the third and fourth items. Directly after the presentation of the last item, a response field represented by an array of six horizontal lines displayed from left to right was shown on the screen. 

Participants were required to recall the sequence by entering the letters in their order of presentation using the keyboard of their computer. The response field was automatically populated with participants' answers without any possibility of correcting their responses. Only letters could be entered in the response field. Once the participant typed six letters, a message inviting them to start the next trial was shown on the screen. 

The experiment was separated into two blocks. In the first block, participants were presented with ungrouped and grouped sequences in the second block. The order of the trials presenting phonologically similar and dissimilar letters was random. 

Each block started with four trials, presenting two phonologically similar and dissimilar letter sequences. During the training session, participants had feedback regarding the accuracy of their responses, but not during the experimental trials. 

The task was programmed with lab.js, a free and open-source online study builder (Henninger et al., 2019). Then, the experiment was exported to and hosted on a protected server of the University of Geneva. The management of online data collection was performed with JATOS, an open-source and free online studies manager (Lange et al., 2015).

Hypotheses

The data obtained so far show that temporal grouping does not lead to increased interpositions when using musical material, suggesting that different positional codes are required to represent verbal and musical serial order in STM.
As there is no evidence in the verbal STM literature that grouping sequences in two groups of three items leads to an increase in interposition errors, an alternative interpretation would be to consider that this effect is specific to the use of longer grouping structures (e.g., 3 × 3 structure). 

If the latter is true and similar positional codes underlie serial order representation in verbal and musical STM, we should observe the same pattern of data with verbal material as observed in Experiment 1 with musical material. In other words, we should observe a recall advantage, a scalloped serial position curve, and response latency with peaks at the beginning of groups for grouped sequences, but no increase in interposition errors. 

If the former interpretation is true, we should observe the same pattern with an additional increase in interposition errors for grouped sequences. Regarding the effect of phonological similarity, no predictions were made before running the experiment, except for the expectation that recall accuracy should be worse for phonologically similar sequences. 

The manipulation of phonological similarity was implemented in this experiment only to take into account the fact there is an inherent effect of pitch proximity when using tone sequences, which is considered a musical proxy of phonological similarity (Williamson et al., 2010).

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