Two separate verbal processing rates contributing to short-term memory span.

Cowan, Nelson; Wood, Noelle L.; Wood, Phillip K.; Keller, Timothy A.; Nugent, Lara; Keller, Connie V.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.127.2.141

Cited by 167 publications

(287 citation statements)

References 65 publications

(150 reference statements)

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“…Although this possibility cannot be conclusively refuted, conditional or correlational arguments, such as the relationship between speech rate and memory span (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Cowan et al, 1998), have driven theorizing elsewhere in short-term memory research, and individual-differences analyses have made a major contribution to our understanding of working memory (Conway, Jarrold, Kane, Miyake, & Towse, 2007). The present results extend this line of attack to a microanalysis of the processes underlying recency.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

Farrell

Lewandowsky

2012

Mem Cogn

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Serial recall is often assumed to involve response suppression: the removal or inhibition of items already recalled so that they are not recalled again. Evidence for response suppression includes repetition inhibition and the separation of erroneous repetitions. Some theorists have suggested that response suppression, by eliminating competing responses, also contributes to recency in forward serial recall. We present experiments in which performance on the final item was examined as a function of whether or not the preceding retrievals entailed suppression of potential response competitors. In line with the predictions of response suppression, recency was found to be reduced when the earlier recall errors consisted of intrusion errors (which leave list items unsuppressed) rather than transposition errors (which involve suppression).

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

Farrell

Lewandowsky

2012

Mem Cogn

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“…Age-related differences in processing speed have been observed on a variety of tasks, including verbal memory span, visual search, letter discrimination, memory search, retrieval fluency, mental addition, mental rotation, and response selection (e.g., Cowan et al, 1998;Hale, 1990;Kail, 1988;Ridderinkhof and van der Molen, 1997). In spite of this work, relatively little is known about the nature of development of processing speed in very young children.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…However, findings in elementary school children by Cowan et al (1998) suggest that a global rate of processing is an oversimplication given that more specific rates also contribute to individual differences on span tasks. In that study, rates for rehearsal and retrieval independently were related to age and to span task performance and yet were independent of each other in latent variable models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Age-related differences in reaction time task performance in young children

Kiselev

Espy

Sheffield

2009

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Performance of reaction time (RT) tasks was investigated in young children and adults to test the hypothesis that age-related differences in processing speed supersede a "global" mechanism and are a function of specific differences in task demands and processing requirements. The sample consisted of 54 4-year-olds, 53 5-year-olds, 59 6-yearolds, and 35 adults from Russia. Using the regression approach pioneered by Brinley and the transformation method proposed by Madden and colleagues and Ridderinkhoff and van der Molen, age-related differences in processing speed differed among RT tasks with varying demands. In particular, RTs differed between children and adults on tasks that required response suppression, discrimination of color or spatial orientation, reversal of contingencies of previously learned stimulus-response rules, and greater stimulus-response complexity. Relative costs of these RT task differences were larger than predicted by the global difference hypothesis except for response suppression. Among young children, age-related differences larger than predicted by the global difference hypothesis were evident when tasks required color or spatial orientation discrimination and stimulus-response rule complexity, but not for response suppression or reversal of stimulus-response contingencies. Process-specific, age-related differences in processing speed that support heterochronicity of brain development during childhood were revealed.

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“…If sufficient information cannot be retained in WM and integrated, it is assumed that various problems cannot be solved, and that reading or language comprehension cannot be completed. An important approach to WM has blossomed, in which experimental and psychometric methods are synthesized (e.g., Conway, Cowan, Bunting, Therriault, & Minkoff, 2002;Cowan et al, 1998;Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999;Miyake, Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty, 2001). …”

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confidence: 99%

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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977

1,051

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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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Two separate verbal processing rates contributing to short-term memory span.

Cited by 167 publications

References 65 publications

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

Age-related differences in reaction time task performance in young children

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

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