Working Memory Models and Measures in Language and Bilingualism Research: Integrating Cognitive and Affective Perspectives

Abstract

Although emotional or affective working memory (WM) is quite well established in general psychology, not much research has looked into its potential implications for the language sciences and bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) research until recently. To fill this gap, this paper aims to propose that WM has not just cognitive implications, but its affective dimension may also make complementary and unique contributions to language and bilingualism/SLA research. Towards this end, we first briefly synthesize the cognitive views of WM conceptions and assessment procedures in the current language sciences and bilingualism/SLA research. Next, we turn to discuss the theoretical models and assumptions of affective WM and explore their theoretical implications for bilingualism/SLA research based on emerging empirical evidence. Then, we propose a conceptual framework integrating cognitive and affective WM perspectives and further provide guidelines for designing affective WM span tasks that can be used in future affective WM–language research, focusing on the construction procedures of several emotion-based affective WM span tasks (e.g., the emotional reading span task, the emotional operation span task, and the emotional symmetry span task) as examples. Overall, we argue that affective feelings are also an integral part of the mental representations held in WM and future research in the language sciences and bilingualism/SLA should incorporate both cognitive and affective WM dimensions.

Environment-Based Design (Ebd): Using Only Necessary Knowledge for Designer Creativity

“…The core of EBD is that products come from the environment, serve the environment, and change the environment (Zeng, 2004(Zeng, , 2012. EBD has been effectively applied in various fields, including generating design requirements in medical device design (Chen et al, 2005), developing a manual of quality management systems in the industry (Sun et al, 2011), solving enterprise applications integrations problem (Tan et al, 2012), developing a model for design chain management (Liu and Zeng, 2009), and analysing human factors (Mohammadi et al, 2022;Wen et al, 2022;Yang et al, 2021). It has also been applied in education (Ma et al, 2022;Ommi and Zeng, 2018;Su et al, 2022), organizational management (Wang et al, 2017), and health domain.…”

Learners with Low Working Memory Capacity Benefit More from the Presence of an Instructor’s Face in Video Lectures

“…Only a few studies have examined the influence of the learners’ cognitive abilities on the effectiveness of video lecture design (e.g., the instructor’s presence in video lectures). For example, working memory (WM) refers to the limited capacity to handle cognitive demands in the service of mental tasks ( Baddeley and Hitch 1974 ; Baddeley 2003 ; Sepp et al 2019 ; Cowan 2022 ; Wen et al 2022 ). The instructor’s presence may overload learners with a low WMC and impede learning, while this may not be the case for those with a high WMC.…”