Developing the theory of working memory (original) (raw)
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Working memory and psycholinguistics
ENG 562 FDFP-ΦΛ I forgot my title: Working memory, language, and psycholinguistics in the 20 th century Much of this paper owes a debt to Randall W. Engle"s belief that "individual differences in WM capacity are apparently important to cognition in a large sample of real-life situation, at least in those involving the acquisition of new information" (Engle, 1996: 91). The role of WM in these real-life situations offers us a glimpse into the intricate workings of cognition, verbal skills, and recall in daily life. This paper starts with Baddeley and Hitch"s seminal paper on the topic and maneuvering through the current research. The purpose of this review is to see whether working memory (WM), whether short-term or long-term, capacity has adequately offered the field of psycholinguistics any definite answers to how and why input and output affect error production. Throughout this paper I will discuss the initial history of WM as it has evolved in the discipline and the ways in which it has shaped studies throughout the last four decades.
Articulatory rehearsal and phonological storage in working memory
1993
The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a lO-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal. Recent theoretical developments in the field of working memory have depended on the identification and investigation of converging operations that rule out competing hypotheses about different hypothetical components (Baddeley, 1986, p. 114; Hitch, 1980; cf. Gamer, Hake, & Eriksen, 1956). In immediate serial recall, performance is reliably affected by a number of properties of the stimulus items or of the procedure under which they are learned: (1) the degree of phonemic confusability among the items to be remembered (the phonemic similarity effect); (2) the articulatory duration of the items to be remembered (the word length effect); (3) the modality of presentation of the items to be remembered; (4) requiring the subjects to engage in the concurrent vocalization of irrelevant speech sounds (the effect of articulatory suppression); and (5) the concurrent presentation of irrelevant speech sounds that are to be ignored (the effect of unattended speech). The specific pattern of interrelation-The authors' collaboration was made possible by travel grants under an agreement between the Royal Society and the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerche. They are grateful to Jill Bayfield, Morag Maclean, and Johanne Reed for their assistance in running Experiment 4, to Marion Gallasch and Anna van Leempunen for their assistance in running Experiment 5, and to
Journal of Memory and Language, 2011
Despite developments in phonology over the last few decades, models of verbal working memory make reference to phoneme-sized phonological units, rather than to the features of which they are composed. This study investigates the influence on short-term retention of such features by comparing the serial recall of lists of syllables with varying types and levels of similarity in their onset consonants. Lists are (a) dissimilar (/fa-na-ga/) (b) acoustically similar (/pa-ta-ka/) or (c) articulatorily similar (/da-la-za/). When no overt articulation is required, we find no decrease in performance for articulatorily similar items as compared to the dissimilar list. However, we are able to show that acoustic similarity clearly impairs recall. It is only when participants recall the lists orally, that performance is impaired for both types of similar lists. These results have implications for accounts of the phonological similarity effect in particular and of verbal working memory in general.
Backward recall and benchmark effects of working memory
Memory & Cognition, 2010
Four effects-the word length effect, the irrelevant speech effect, the acoustic confusion effect, and the concurrent articulation effect-have played a prominent role in the development of influential theories of immediate memory. Indeed, accounting for these four findings was one of the motivations for creating the phonological loop component of working memory , and these effects are seen as key data that computational models of short-term memory must account for . Despite the numerous studies examining these phenomena, very few studies have examined them using backward recall. To that end, one purpose of the four experiments reported here was to assess whether the four benchmark effects of working memory are observable with backward recall. A second purpose was to test the predictions of two models of memory: Despite their many differences, both the primacy model and the feature model predict that all four effects should be observed with backward recall.
Developments in the concept of working memory
Neuropsychology (journal), 1994
The authors summarize developments in the concept of working memory as a multicomponent system, beginning by contrasting this approach with alternative uses of the term working memory. According to a 3-component model, working memory comprises a phonological loop for manipulating and storing speech-based information and a visuospatial sketchpad that performs a similar function for visual and spatial information. Both are supervised by a central executive, which functions as an attentional control system. A simple trace-decay model of the phonological loop provides a coherent account of the effects of word length, phonemic similarity, irrelevant speech, and articulatory suppression in verbal short-term memory tasks. This model of the loop has also proved useful in the analysis of neuropsychological, developmental and, cross-cultural data. The notion of the sketchpad is supported by selective interference with imagery in normal adults and by specific neuropsychological impairment. Analysis of the central executive is illustrated by work on deficits in the ability to coordinate subproccesses in Alzheimer's disease. Some 20 years ago, we proposed that the concept of a unitary short-term memory system should be replaced by that of a multicomponent working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). The proposal appears to have been a fruitful one. The term working memory has become increasingly common, and we suspect that the majority of those of our colleagues who continue to prefer the older terms of shortterm or primary memory would be sympathetic to the emphasis on the functional role of the system that is implied by the term working memory. At the same time, it is important to note that the term working memory is used in a number of different ways. Leaving aside the very different concept of working memory used in the animal literature (Olton, Walker, & Gage, 1978), there are at least three separate uses of the term in cognitive psychology. First, computational models using a production system architecture use the term to refer to that part of the architecture that holds the relevant productions. It is, however, important to note that working memory in such systems is an assumption that underpins this method of modeling rather than an attempt to represent an important component of human cognition. In Newell's (1990) SOAR architecture, working memory is assumed to be of unlimited capacity and is not in any sense modeled on empirical evidence. That does not of course mean that production system architectures are not, under certain circumstances, used in ways that explicitly attempt to reflect the empicial evidence, and in these cases, some form of limitation on working memory capacity is typically assumed (Just & Carpenter, 1992; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978). A second interpretation focuses on working memory as a system that combines storage and processing, measuring
The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000
Theoreti cal structures within cognitive science come in different forms, ranging from detailed mathematical or computational models of narrow and precisely defined phenomena, to broad theoretical frameworks that attempt to make sense of a wide range of phenomena and that leave open much of the more detailed specification. The purpose of such a framework is to represent what is currently known while at the same time prompting further questions that are tractable. This is likely either to extend the range of applicability of the model, or to increase its theoretical depth, subsequently leading to more precisely specified sub-models. The concept of working memory proposed by Baddeley and Hitch 1 provided such a framework for conceptualizing the role of temporary information storage in the performance of a wide range of complex cognitive tasks (see Box 1). It represented a development of earlier models of short-term memory, such as those of Broadbent 2 , and Atkinson and Shiffrin 3 , but differed in two ways. First it abandoned the concept of a unitary store in favour of a multicomponent system, and second it emphasized the function of such a system in complex cognition, rather than memory per se.
Working memory: looking back and looking forward
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2003
The concept of working memory proposes that a dedicated system maintains and stores information in the short term, and that this system underlies human thought processes. Current views of working memory involve a central executive and two storage systems: the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad. Although this basic model was first proposed 30 years ago, it has continued to develop and to stimulate research and debate. The model and the most recent results are reviewed in this article.