The Effects of Item Distinctiveness and Sentence Length on Working Memory.

Faye Smithson. 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this present study was to examine factors that can influence recall performance on the reading span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Specifically, it was investigated if recall performance would benefit from a single word embedded within the sentence, which was related or unrelated to the target word context. Additional manipulations of longer and shorter sentence length and their effects upon recall within the reading span tasks, were also investigated. Syntactic structure of sentences was controlled to reduce possible confounding effects within the stimuli. There was a clear benefit in recall ability for sentences that contained contextually related manipulated word to the target word (distinctive group). No effect was found for sentence length. These results of item distinctiveness, support the recall reconstruction hypothesis for working memory (Towse, Cowan, Hitch & Horton, 2008), which suggests people may use sentential content from the processing aspect of the reading span task as memorial ques to help in the reconstruction of previously degraded target words.