Selective interference reveals dissociation between auditory memory for location and pitch

EFFECTS of interfering task-irrelevant tones varying in location or pitch o n auditory location and pitch n-back tasks were investigated to study wheth er there is segregation of spatial and non-spatial information processing i n the auditory working memory, The subjects performed spatial and non-spati al auditory 1- and 2-back tasks with and without location or pitch interfer ence. In the 1-back tasks, location but not pitch interference significantl y impaired location task performance whereas pitch but not location interfe rence disrupted pitch task performance. In the 2-back tasks, neither the lo cation nor the pitch task performance was differentially disrupted by the d istracters, suggesting that there is memory load-dependent segregation in t he handling of location and pitch information in the neuronal networks enga ged in auditory working memory. (C), 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.