Abstract
Multiple resource theory suggests that enhancements in human information management capacity may be realized via multimodal interaction. The possibility of leveraging multiple sensory systems to maximize working memory (WM) throughput becomes essential as the information age conveys volumes of data that would overburden the visual channel alone. The current study proposes an expansion of the current bi-modal (verbal, visual/spatial) model of WM to a multimodal WM system, which includes verbal, visual, spatial, kinesthetic, tactile, and tonal component subsystems. Single modality capacity was measured for each proposed subsystem. In addition, multimodal capacity was calculated for combined modalities. Results demonstrated that multimodal WM capacity surpasses that of single modality capacity. Most notably, multimodal WM capacity averaged nearly three times the ‘magic number’ seven.
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