The Role of Attention in the Development of Short‐Term Memory: Age Differences in the Verbal Span of Apprehension

Cowan, Nelson; Nugent, Lara; Elliott, Emily M.; Ponomarev, Igor; Saults, J. Scott

doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00080

Cited by 136 publications

(149 citation statements)

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“…Second, the suggestion that sensory memory decay might have been the limiting factor does not agree with the findings from the short test delays that Cowan et al (1999) used. Cowan et al (1999Cowan et al ( , 2000 found pronounced bow-shaped serial position functions in memory for ignored speech, so sensory memory for even the early serial positions seemed to remain available at the time of list-recall testing.…”

Section: Memory For Ignored Speechmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…If the focus of attention could repeatedly access that record, it would be difficult to explain the limit to about 4 items recalled from unattended lists (Cowan, 2001;Cowan et al, 1999). Also, some procedures include a cue to examine only one object within the memory record of an array (e.g., Luck & Vogel, 1997) or list (Cowan, Johnson, & Saults, in press), yet a similar capacity limit of about 4 items is obtained.…”

Section: Assumption 3: Single Iteration Of Retrievalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a series of experiments (Cowan, Lichty, & Grove, 1990;Cowan, Nugent, Elliott, Ponomarev, & Saults, 1999;Cowan, Nugent, Elliott, & Saults, 2000) we have examined memory for spoken lists that were ignored while a silent, visual task requiring phonological processing was carried out. This sort of task serves the same purpose as memory for the ignored channel in selective listening (Glucksberg & Cowen, 1970;Norman, 1969) except that it avoids the problem of acoustic masking between channels.…”

Section: Memory For Ignored Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The finding in all of these studies was that there is a memory record of the ignored speech channel but that, in comparison to memory for attended speech, successful memory for ignored speech requires a shorter retention interval between presentation and test (≤2 s for maximum performance). Cowan et al (1999) judged the capacity of memory with short test delays and found that it was about 3.5 items in adults, regardless of the list length, and smaller in children.…”

Section: Memory For Ignored Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the main procedure of Cowan et al (1999), participants carried out a task in which the learned name of a picture in the center of the computer screen rhymed with the learned name of one of four peripheral pictures (to be selected with a mouse click, followed by a new central picture to be judged). Meanwhile, lists of spoken digits were to be ignored.…”

Section: Memory For Ignored Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

Cowan

Elliott

Saults

et al. 2005

Cognitive Psychology

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Working memory (WM) is the set of mental processes holding limited information in a temporarily accessible state in service of cognition. We provide a theoretical framework to understand the relation between WM and aptitude measures. The WM measures that have yielded high correlations with aptitudes include separate storage and processing task components, on the assumption that WM involves both storage and processing. We argue that the critical aspect of successful WM measures is that rehearsal and grouping processes are prevented, allowing a clearer estimate of how many separate chunks of information the focus of attention circumscribes at once. Storage-and-processing tasks correlate with aptitudes, according to this view, largely because the processing task prevents rehearsal and grouping of items to be recalled. In a developmental study, we document that several scope-of-attention measures that do not include a separate processing component, but nevertheless prevent efficient rehearsal or grouping, also correlate well with aptitudes and with storage-andprocessing measures. So does digit span in children too young to rehearse. Keywordsworking memory; short-term memory; individual differences; variation in working memory; cholastic abilities; intellectual abilities; attention; capacity; storage capacity Baddeley and Hitch (1974) highlighted a key theoretical construct, working memory (WM), which can be described generally as the set of mechanisms capable of retaining a small amount of information in an active state for use in ongoing cognitive tasks (though it now means Research on WM suggests that the measures used most often to examine individual differences have both strengths and weaknesses. A main type of strength is their strong correlation with intellectual aptitude tests, and a main type of weakness is the difficulty encountered in analyzing and interpreting WM test results. This difficulty stems largely from the reliance on dual tasks in the measurement of WM capacity (which include separate storage and processing task components). We will argue that the research literature provides hints that the strengths can be retained without using storage-and-processing measures. We will offer a theoretical framework for doing so, and for measuring WM in a more meaningful way than is found with current measurement practices. The theoretical framework is based on the notion of an adjustable attentional focus and on measures of the storage capacity of attention or its scope. The predictions tested in the present article pertain to the scope of attention, whereas the adjustable nature of the focus allows consistency with other highly relevant research (e.g., Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001).We do not judge the success of this endeavor by whether storage-and-processing measures or the proposed alternative, scope-of-attention measures, pick up more variance in aptitude tasks.Rather, success will be judged by whether the variance that is picked up contributes to our understanding of the processes underlyi...

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Section: Memory For Ignored Speechmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Assumption 3: Single Iteration Of Retrievalmentioning

confidence: 99%