Contraintes de contrôle articulatoire intrasyllabique dans la mémoire de travail verbaleResearch Study • June 2nd, 2002
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.
