working memory and melody

[Monita Chatterjee <mchatterjee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List, 

This discussion is very interesting. My lab is (with great caution)
moving toward an aging study in cochlear implant listeners, and we've
been discussing ways to measure working memory using non-verbal tasks. I
 know that measures of working memory have been obtained using lights
and colors, etc., but are these measures telling us about different
mechanisms vs. measures that are obtained using speech (digit span,
etc.)? I would guess that the answer is yes, given that even for pitch,
the measure taps into a different mechanism. If I'm interested in a
measure of working memory in a hearing-impaired population, I should
avoid verbal tasks: but what sorts of tasks would be non-verbal, and yet
informative about auditory/speech perception? 

Thanks,

Monita



M Chatterjee, Ph.D.
Asst Professor, Hearing and Speech Sciences
0100 LeFrak Hall
University of Maryland, College Park
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405 7716