| Abstract | Examined whether surface phonetic form is included in short-term memory (STM) representation by exploiting the tone sandhi (TNS) phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese and whether tonal similarity affects STM of verbal material in a tone language. In Exp 1, 12 Mandarin Chinese speakers recalled visually presented sequences of monosyllabic Chinese morphemes having the same or different tones. More errors were made on the monotonal than on multitonal sequences, confirming the effect of tonal similarity on STM. In Exp 2, 10 Chinese students recalled visually presented sequences of disyllabic nonsense words. Half of the sequences were subject to the TNS rule, which made the 1st characters in the sequences identical in pronunciation, creating potential
phonological confusion. More errors occurred on the sequences subject to the TNS rule, indicating the existence of a surface phonetic representation in STM. |
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