Schweppe, J. 1 , Grice, M. 2 & Rummer, R. 1
1 Cognitive Psychology, University of Erfurt, Germany
2 Phonetics, University of Cologne, Germany
We test the assumption that verbal working memory and speech production are closely related by having a closer look at how phonological features influence errors in serial recall and in a tongue twister task. In serial list recall, syllables with onset consonants that are acoustically similar (sharing the MANNER feature, e.g. pa-ta) were more frequently confused than syllables with dissimilar consonants, with both auditory and visual input and written and oral output. Articulatorily similar items (with consonants sharing the PLACE feature, e.g. da-za) led to more errors than dissimilar items only with oral recall, that is, only when the task involved overt articulation. For the tongue twister task (paced reading aloud of syllables with incompatible onset and rhyme patterns, e.g. pam-tos-tam-pos), the error pattern resembled that of oral serial recall. The recall data suggest a greater role for input than for output similarity. A comparison between the recall and the tongue twister data indicates that verbal working memory and speech production are similar in that they are similarly influenced by both internal features (acoustic similarity affects serial recall and paced reading in the absence of acoustic input) and by motor codes (articulatory similarity affects those tasks that require overt articulation).