PHONOLOGICAL LOOP AND INTERMITTENT ACTIVITY - A WHISTLE TASK AS ARTICULATORY SUPPRESSION

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the effect of articul atory suppression is due to the activation of an irrelevant phonology or to intermittent articulatory movements. In the first experiment, su bjects were tested for serial recall of visually presented letter sequ ences that were either phonologically similar or dissimilar, and had t o remember each of the letter sequences under a no-suppression control or a suppression condition. In the suppression condition, half of the subjects were engaged in an intermittent speech suppression and the o ther half were in an intermittent whistle suppression task. The phonol ogical similarity effects appeared in the control condition, but not i n the suppression condition, irrespective of the type of suppression. In the second experiment, the phonological similarity effect again dis appeared in the intermittent whistling condition, but not in the condi tion in which the subjects required to engage a continuous whistling t ask. The results suggested that the effect of articulatory suppression was due to intermittent articulatory activity rather than the activat ion of an irrelevant phonology.