Temporal grouping in auditory spatial serial memory.

Grouping effects in serial recall have been widely studied with verbal stimuli, but hardly ever with spatial stimuli and not at all with auditory spatial stimuli. In Experiment 1, we examined the influence of combined temporal and pitch grouping on recall of the locations from which bursts of white noise were presented. Similar to findings in verbal studies, effects of the grouping manipulation were found in performance accuracy, in the nature of order errors, and in the timing of responses. Experiment 2 was designed to distinguish the role played by pitch grouping from that played by temporal grouping, through independent manipulation of the presence of a shift in pitch and that of a temporal gap. The results showed that the temporal grouping manipulation determined performance and the pitch grouping manipulation did not. Similarities between our findings and those of verbal studies, and implications for the understanding of serial memory are discussed.