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ESCOP 2011, 17th MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 29th Sep. - 02nd Oct.

Working memory

Saturday, October 01st,   2011 [17:20 - 19:20]

PS_2.056 - Working memory involvement during learning with text and pictures: A dual-task approach

van Genuchten, E. , Scheiter, K. & Schüler, A.

Knowledge Media Research Center

The theoretical framework for multimedia learning (i.e., learning with text and pictures) is the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML). Based on Baddeley’s working memory model, CTML states that information selected from text is processed in the phonological loop, whereas information selected from pictures is processed in the visuospatial sketchpad. We investigated this distinction empirically using a dual-task paradigm. Students learned from text and pictures while performing a secondary task that loaded either the phonological loop (i.e., articulatory suppression) or the visuospatial sketchpad (i.e., foot tapping). The preliminary results show that the phonological loop is involved during learning from text: performance on free recall, recall questions, and transfer questions concerning information in the text was impaired by articulatory suppression. The visuospatial sketchpad was also, although less strongly, involved during learning from pictures: performance on recall questions concerning information in the picture was impaired by foot tapping. Thus, these results corroborate the assumptions of CTML that working memory is involved in multimedia learning. They demonstrate that the distinction between phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad also seems to be relevant when processing complex learning materials.




PS_2.057 - Are true and false memories similarly influenced by cognitive load in a working memory task?

Plancher, G. , Stocker, C. & Barrouillet, P.

Developmental Cognitive Psychology Team. University of Geneva. Geneva, Switzerland

The Time-Based Resource-Sharing model was designed to account for the relationships between working memory functions that are processing and storage. It has been shown that storage capacity is a function of the cognitive load (CL) involved by processing. Adapting to a complex span task the DRM paradigm known to provoke false memories, we wonder whether true and false memories are similarly influenced by CL. Participants studied lists of 6 words, all associated with a non-presented critical item. Between each word, they performed intervening activities varying in cognitive load (high or low) and nature (articulatory suppression or attentional capture). For one group, lists were semantically related (bed, rest, pillow, ... for Sleep), for another, phonologically related (rat, fat, hat, … for Cat). Immediate serial recall followed each list presentation and delayed recognition ended the experiment. While high CL leads to more forgetting of true memories, with articulatory suppression more deleterious at immediate recall and attentional capture at delayed recognition, false memories remain uninfluenced by these factors. Our results suggest that false memories do not appear to rely on working memory mechanisms, but probably rather on long-term memory processes.




PS_2.058 - Processing and storage in working memory: The effect of memory load on processing performance

Vergauwe, E. 1 , Barrouillet, P. 1 & Camos, V. 2

1 Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
2 Département de Psychologie, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

Working memory (WM) is usually defined as a system devoted to the simultaneous processing and storage of information. Up till now, this dual functioning of WM has mainly been studied by assessing the effect of processing demands on recall performance in dual-task situations combining processing and storage. Doing so, it has been shown that recall performance is a direct, linear function of the cognitive load involved in concurrent processing, both in verbal and in visuo-spatial working memory (e.g., Barrouillet et al., 2004, 2007; Vergauwe et al., 2009, 2010). In the present study, we examined the relationship between processing and storage in WM by assessing the effect of memory load on processing performance. Using a pre-load method, verbal storage (series of letters) was combined with verbal processing (parity judgment) in Experiment 1, and visuo-spatial storage (series of locations) was combined with visuo-spatial processing (fit judgment) in Experiment 2. In line with the time-based dual functioning of WM as proposed by the Time-Based Resource-Sharing model, processing performance decreased as a direct, linear function of concurrent memory load in both experiments.




PS_2.059 - Working memory and the development of emergent writing skills

Bourke, L. 1 , Davies, S. 1 , Sumner, E. 2 & Green, C. 1

1 Department of Psychology, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK
2 Department of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

The present study investigated the relative contribution of working memory to the acquisition of emergent writing skills at letter, word and sentence level in typically developing children aged 4-5 years. There are bi-directional processing advantages to reading and writing and the two literacy domains are taught in parallel. Of particular interest was the role of visual short-term and working memory in the interplay between reading and writing development. It is essential that the orthographic configuration of the correct grapheme correspondence to represent the speech based code is identified. Therefore, it was predicted at the earliest stages of formal instruction that there would be a greater reliance on visual short-term and working memory to support the visual discrimination skills required to encode this information from reading in order to perform writing tasks. To test this hypothesis the children were assessed on the visual and phonological domain specific storage and processing components of working memory. Measures of nonverbal cognitive ability, orthographic awareness and the children’s ability to write letters, words and sentences, independently, were examined. The findings are discussed in relation to current theoretical conceptualisations of the cognitive underpinnings related to individual differences in the developmental efficacy of early writing skills.




PS_2.060 - Syntactic and semantic influences on verbal short-term memory

Acheson, D. 1, 2 & Hagoort, P. 1, 2

1 Neurobiology of Language Department. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Nijmegen, The Netherlands,
2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior. Radboud Univeristy. Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Although semantic influences on verbal short-term memory (STM) performance are well-established, substantially less research has studied the influence of syntactic representation. In the present study, syntactic and semantic factors were manipulated in order to explore how both interact to influence verbal STM. Subjects performed immediate, serial recall on lists of six Dutch words composed of three sets of adjective-noun pairs, where the nouns were either common (‘de’) or neuter (‘het’) gender. The grammaticality of the word pairs was manipulated through the morphological agreement between the adjectives and nouns (either legal of illegal), and the semantics by creating more or less meaningful word pairs (e.g., big bucket vs. grateful bucket). Syntactic and semantic factors were fully crossed within-subjects and within-items yielding a 2 (Grammatical) X 2 (Meaningful) X 2 (Noun Gender) design. Results on serial order memory accuracy revealed that both grammaticality and meaningfulness improved performance, and that the factors interacted, such that the beneficial effects of grammaticality were only present for lists of meaningful items. The present results thus demonstrate that while something as simple as morphological agreement (a long-term, syntactic constraint) can improve verbal STM performance, it only seem to do so in the presence stronger semantic constraints.




PS_2.061 - Partial report techniques and the characteristics of iconic memory

Coltheart, V.

Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science Macquarie University

Brief unmasked (50-100 ms) visual displays of alphanumeric characters are retained in a short-lived form of visual memory referred to as iconic memory. Although only 3-4 items can be reported from such displays when full report is attempted, the use of partial report cues presented after display offset has shown that many more items are briefly available in memory and can be selected for report even when the cue is delayed by 50 ms or more (Sperling, 1960; Averbach & Coriell, 1961). However a different technique has been used more recently to measure memory from a brief visual display. The display is shown again with one or more missing items. The task is to report the missing items from the initial display. Using this technique, the results are not consistent with the traditional picture of iconic memory. Several experiments contrasted report from brief letter displays interrogated by missing letters and other cues. The implications of results obtained with different partial report techniques for an understanding of properties of iconic memory are considered.




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