Distinctive Features and Errors in Short-Term Memory for English Consonants

Errors in short-term recall of 23 English consonants were tabulated and related to three distinctive-feature systems. The consonants were always presented in initial position in a consonant-vowel diagram, and the vowel was always /a/. Subjects were instructed to copy a list of consonants as it was being presented, followed by recall of the list. Perceptual errors were excluded from the recall-error matrix by scoring for recall only correctly copied consonants. The data were also analyzed in such a way as to eliminate differences in response bias for different consonants. Having controlled for response bias, each feature system makes predictions about the rank order of different intrusion errors in recall. Each of the three feature systems was significantly more accurate than chance in these predictions, but the most accurate system was one developed in the present study. This system is a slightly modified version of the conventional phonetic analysis of consonants in terms of voicing, nasality, openness of the vocal tract (manner of articulation), and place of articulation. The results suggest that a consonant is coded in short-term memory, not as a unit, but as a set of distinctive features, each of which may be forgotten at least semiindependently.