Working Memory Capacity

Abstract

Recent researchers have attempted to correlate measures of working memory (WM) with measures of higher level cognitive skills and abilities focusing on the functions of this limited capacity system, i.e., processing and storage. Relationships between three span measures of the functional model of WM capacity and two measures of reading comprehension were investigated. The magnitude of the correlations found between reading comprehension and the two spans embedded in reading processing tasks was similar to that of the correlation found between a third span measure embedded in a quantitative task with reading comprehension. These results indicated that these span measures of WM capacity were independent of the nature of the concurrent processing task.

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