Irrelevant changing-state vibrotactile stimuli disrupt verbal serial recall: implications for theories of interference in short-term memory

What causes interference in short-term memory? We report the novel finding that immediate memory for visually-presented verbal items is sensitive to disruption from task-irrelevant vibrotactile stimuli. Specifically, a visual sequence disrupted by concurrently presented of vibrations, but only when entails change (when “jumps” between two hands). The impact on visual-verbal serial recall was similar magnitude auditory stimuli (Experiment 1). Performance missing item task, requiring item-identity rather than item-order, unaffected changing-state 2), as with Moreover, predictability did not modulate effect, arguing against an attention-capture conceptualisation 3). Results support view produced conflict incompatible, amodal serial-ordering processes (interference-by-process) representational codes (interference-by-content).