Poster: Memory and Listening Effort in Two-Talker Conversations: Does Face Visibility Help Us Remember?

Listening to and remembering conversational content is a highly demanding task that requires the interplay of auditory processes and several cognitive functions. In face-to-face conversations, it is quite impossible that two talker’s’ audio signals originate from the same spatial position and that their faces are hidden from view. The availability of such audiovisual cues when listening potentially influences memory and comprehension of the heard content. In the present study, we investigated the effect of static visual faces of two talkers and cognitive functions on the listener’s short-term memory of conversations and listening effort. Participants performed a dual-task paradigm including a primary listening task, where a conversation between two spatially separated talkers (+/- 60°) with static faces was presented. In parallel, a vibrotactile task was administered, independently of both visual and auditory modalities. To investigate the possibility of person-specific factors influencing short-term memory, we assessed additional cognitive functions like working memory. We discuss our results in terms of the role that visual information and cognitive functions play in short-term memory of conversations.