Working memory capacity — facets of a cognitive ability construct

Oberauer, Klaus; Süß, Heinz-Martin; Schulze, Reiner; Wilhelm, Oliver; Wittmann, Werner W.

doi:10.1016/s0191-8869(99)00251-2

Cited by 411 publications

(474 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The reading span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Oberauer, Süß, Schulze, Wilhelm, & Wittmann, 2000) served as the measure of working memory capacity. The reading span task required the participants to read 84 unconnected sentences presented in blocks.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Argument Strength and the Persuasiveness of Stories

Schreiner

Appel

Isberner

et al. 2017

Discourse Processes

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Stories are a powerful means to change people’s attitudes and beliefs. The aim of the current work was to shed light on the role of argument strength (argument quality) in narrative persuasion. The present study examined the influence of strong versus weak arguments on attitudes in a low or high narrative context. Moreover, baseline attitudes, interindividual differences in working memory capacity, and recipients’ transportation were examined. Stories with strong arguments were more persuasive than stories with weak arguments. This main effect was qualified by a two-way interaction with baseline attitude, revealing that argument strength had a greater impact on individuals who initially were particularly doubtful toward the story claim. Furthermore, we identified a three-way interaction showing that argument strength mattered most for recipients who were deeply transported into the story world in stories that followed a typical narrative structure. These findings provide an important specification of narrative persuasion theory.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Argument Strength and the Persuasiveness of Stories

Schreiner

Appel

Isberner

et al. 2017

Discourse Processes

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“…One can make reasonable arguments for or against including correlated errors in structural models, therefore we would most confidently and conservatively say that verbal and spatial WMC share at least 70% of their variance, and therefore WM span measures capture primarily domain-general variance in cognitive ability. Indeed, other recent latent-variable studies have similarly pointed to either a unitary WMC across verbal and spatial domains or distinguishable verbal and spatial WMCs that share 70%-90% of their variance (Ackerman et al, 2002;Kyllonen, 1993;Law et al, 1995;Oberauer et al, 2000Oberauer et al, , 2003Park et al, 2002;Salthouse, 1995;Swanson, 1996). STM span, in contrast, appears to tap more domain-specific storage and rehearsal capabilities (although not entirely specific, as verbal and spatial STM shared 40% of their variance), which fits with the experimental and neuropsychological data that have been used to support fractionated WM models such as Baddeley's (1986Baddeley's ( , 2000.…”

Section: The Domain Generality Of Wmcmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Generality of Working Memory Capacity: A Latent-Variable Approach to Verbal and Visuospatial Memory Span and Reasoning.

Kane

Hambrick

Tuholski

et al. 2004

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

1,391

115

1,402

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A latent-variable study examined whether verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) capacity measures reflect a primarily domain-general construct by testing 236 participants in 3 span tests each of verbal WM, visuospatial WM, verbal short-term memory (STM), and visuospatial STM, as well as in tests of verbal and spatial reasoning and general fluid intelligence (Gf). Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models indicated that the WM tasks largely reflected a domain-general factor, whereas STM tasks, based on the same stimuli as the WM tasks, were much more domain specific. The WM construct was a strong predictor of Gf and a weaker predictor of domain-specific reasoning, and the reverse was true for the STM construct. The findings support a domain-general view of WM capacity, in which executive-attention processes drive the broad predictive utility of WM span measures, and domain-specific storage and rehearsal processes relate more strongly to domain-specific aspects of complex cognition.

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“…Yet, on a lower level of generality, separate factors for verbal-numerical and for visual-spatial WM tasks can be distinguished (Alloway, Gathercole, & Pickering, 2006;Kane et al, 2004;Oberauer et al, 2000;Shah & Miyake, 1996). Figure 12 shows results from a representative study illustrating the generality and the domain-specificity of individual differences in WM capacity.…”

Section: Round C: Individual Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

253

213

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We review the evidence for the three principal theoretical contenders that vie to explain why and how working memory capacity is limited. We examine the possibility that capacity limitations arise from temporal decay; we examine whether they might reflect a limitation in cognitive resources; and we ask whether capacity might be limited because of mutual interference of representations in working memory. We evaluate each hypothesis against a common set of findings reflecting the capacity limit: The set-size effect and its modulation by domain-specificity and heterogeneity of the memory set; the effects of unfilled retention intervals and of distractor processing in the retention interval; and the pattern of correlates of working-memory tests. We conclude that---at least for verbal memoranda---a decay explanation is untenable. A resource-based view remains tenable but has difficulty accommodating several findings. The interference approach has its own set of difficulties but accounts best for the set of findings, and therefore appears to present the most promising approach for future development.Keywords: working memory, decay, resources, interference, individual differences WM Capacity 3 What Limits Working Memory Capacity?Working memory (WM) is the system that holds mental representations available for processing. Its limited capacity is a limiting factor for the complexity of our thoughts (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007;Oberauer, 2009). Measures of WM capacity have been identified as major determinants of cognitive development in childhood (Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003) and in old age (Park et al., 2002;Salthouse, 1994), as well as of individual differences in intellectual abilities (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003;Jarrold & Towse, 2006). Understanding why WM capacity is limited is therefore an essential step toward understanding why human cognitive abilities are limited, why individuals differ in these abilities, and how abilities develop over the lifespan.In this article we use the term WM capacity in a descriptive sense, referring to the fact that people can hold only a limited amount of mental content available for processing. The capacity limit is usually operationalized as a limit on how much new information people can remember over short periods of time (in the order of seconds), but there are reasons to believe (discussed below) that the capacity limit also applies to people's ability to make information in the current environment simultaneously available for processing.Hypotheses about what limits WM capacity can be organized into three groups: (1) Some theories assume that representations in WM decay over time, unless decay is prevented by some form of restoration process such as rehearsal. According to this view, WM has limited capacity because only a limited amount of information can be rehearsed before it fades away into an irrecoverable state (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Schweickert & Boruff, 1986). (2) Alternatively, WM capacity has been characterized as a limited resourc...

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Working memory capacity — facets of a cognitive ability construct

Cited by 411 publications

References 38 publications

Argument Strength and the Persuasiveness of Stories

Argument Strength and the Persuasiveness of Stories

The Generality of Working Memory Capacity: A Latent-Variable Approach to Verbal and Visuospatial Memory Span and Reasoning.

What limits working memory capacity?

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