An interaction between semantic memory and prosody contributes to phonological working memory functioning

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It has been widely recognized that semantic memory contributes to verbal short-term memory performance, which is usually assessed in terms of the accuracy of segmental phonology in recall. Word recall experiments showed that recall accuracy in suprasegmental phonology (pitch accent in Japanese) was also affected by experimental manipulations of semantic variables and that the effect of semantics on short-term memory tasks was, in turn, influenced by manipulations of pitch accents. These results suggest a strong interaction between pitch accent and semantics in short-term memory. In contrast, pitch accent manipulation (i.e., accent typicality) and phoneme sequence manipulation (i.e., phonotactic frequency) showed a very limited interaction in Japanese nonword serial recall tasks. These data suggest that the retention of phoneme sequences in phonological working memory is influenced by knowledge about suprasegmental phonology when semantic memory can mediate a link between them.