Serial recall of imagined voices

Abstract

In three experiments, subjects imagined that visually presented information was being presented aloud in another speaker's voice. Our intention was to see if modality- and suffix-like serial recall patterns could be produced if subjects internally generated, rather than heard, auditory input. In Experiment 1, recency recall of a vocally presented list was not impaired when subjects imagined that a visual suffix was auditory. In Experiments 2 and 3, imagining that visual lists were being spoken aloud failed to enhance recency recall relative to silent encoding conditions. These results are described as consistent with percategorical accounts of the modality and suffix effects.