Most research demonstrates articulatory suppression by requiring an individual to repeatedly say an irrelevant speech sound out loud while being presented with a list of words to recall shortly after.
[2] A study done by Franssen, Vandierendonck and Van Hiel[3] which addressed the question, to what extent is phonological working memory involved in time estimation processes.
Their study used irrelevant speech and articulatory suppression to test whether time estimation is affected during a task condition or phonological load.
Another reason articulatory suppression inhibits memory performance more than irrelevant speech is because it prevents information from being represented in the mind and is unable to be rehearsed.
An additional study sought to determine what types of articulatory suppression reduce the strength of encoding items into an individual's memory.
Researchers manipulated participants by engaging them in multiple kinds of articulatory suppression (i.e. some were rather easy, such as saying "the", and some were more difficult, such as spelling a word out loud) and showing them lists to remember.
Results showed that articulatory suppression of any kind reduced the strength in which an individual encoded visual information into their memory.
The reason for this finding is because if an individual is using more effort in remembering how to do something (i.e. spell a word), they are obligated to pay less attention to additional visual information that is presented at the same time.
Irrelevant sound took place when a male voice was spoken in the left headphone throughout the retention interval, right before the recall of items.
With increased understanding of how that process works, improved learning and studying strategies may be able to be developed to help people with second languages or with other aspects of memory.
[7] Specifically, researchers wanted to look at the differences between simultaneous interpreting and articulatory suppression as they relate to working memory.
The second study suggests that the ability to simultaneously interpret language might enable individuals to bypass the effects of articulatory suppression.
Perhaps researchers would be able to investigate if being multi-lingual helps with this or if there is some brain process that makes it easier for them to encode information to memory and therefore to learn multiple languages and then easily interpret between them.
Lastly, the study regarding face recognition and identification reinforces the notion that articulatory suppression interferes with an individual's ability to encode information.
A study by Liefooghe, Vandierendonck, Muyllaert, Verbruggen and Vanneste[9] looked at the role of articulatory suppression can have on task switching.
In the first experiment, participants were asked to sort cards and were instructed either to perform the task silently or to repeat the word "de".
The results obtained from their study concluded that articulatory suppression had a greater effect compared to the control and tapping conditions.
Results from this study indicated, the effects of articulatory suppression increased false recognition of mismatching words on the second list.
A current study done by Van Damme, Menten and d'Ydewalle[14] looked at the effects of articulatory suppression on explicit false memory.
Results from both of these studies, indicate that articulatory suppression has an effect on how we retain information and in increasing our false recognition of memories.
The articulatory suppression condition group asked participants to repeat the word "tap" aloud to a metronome while they transcribed text.