Individual differences in semantic short-term memory capacity and reading comprehension

Journal of Memory and Language

Volumn 48, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 320-345

  Haarmann, Henk J ^a   Davelaar, Eddy J ^b   Usher, Marius ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Conceptual span; Individual differences; Reading comprehension; Reading span; Short term memory; Working memory

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037293119     PISSN: 0749596X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00506-5     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press.
2. Baddeley, A. D. (1970). Estimating the short term component in free recall. British Journal of Psychology, 61, 13-15.
3. Baddeley, A. D. (1972). Retrieval rules and semantic coding in short-term memory. Psychological Bulletin, 78, 379-385.
4. Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
5. Baddeley, A. D. (2000). The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 417-423.
6. Baddeley, A. D. (2001). The magic number and the episodic buffer (Commentary on target article by Cowan). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1).
7. Baddeley, A. D., Logie, R., Nimmo-Smith, I., & Brereton, N. (1985). Components of fluent reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 119-131.
8. Barrett, J., & Williams, G. (1990). Test your own aptitude. London: Kogan Page.
9. Bjork, R. A., & Whitten, W. B. (1974). Recency-sensitive retrieval processes in long-term free recall. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 173-189.
10. Budd, D., Whitney, P., & Turley, K. J. (1995). Individual differences in working memory strategies for reading expository text. Memory & Cognition, 6, 735-748.
11. Bustini, M., Stratta, P., Daneluzzo, E., Pollice, R., Prosperini, P., & Rossi, A. (1999). Tower of Hanoi and WCST performance in schizophrenia: problem-solving capacity and clinical correlates. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 33, 285-290.
12. Butterworth, B., Campbell, R., & Howard, D. (1986). The uses of short-term memory: A case study. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38A, 705-737.
13. Cantor, J., Engle, R. W., & Hamilton, G. (1991). Short-term memory, working memory, and verbal abilities: How do they relate? Intelligence, 15, 229-246.
14. Caplan, D., & Waters, G. S. (1990). Short-term memory and language comprehension: A critical review of the neuropsychological literature. In G. Vallar & T. Shallice (Eds.), Neuropsychological impairments of short-term memory (pp. 337-389). Campidge: Campidge University Press.
15. Caplan, D., & Waters, G. S. (1999). Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 77-126.
16. Carpenter, P. A., Just, M. A., & Shell, P. (1990). What one intelligence test measures: A theoretical account of the processing in the Raven Progressive Matrices Test. Psychological Review, 97, 404-431.
17. Cohen, J. D., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Servan-Schreiber, D. (1999). Schizophrenic deficits in the processing of context: Converging evidence from three theoretically motivated cognitive tasks. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 120-133.
18. Cohen, J. D., Braver, T. S., & O'Reilly, R. C. (1996). A computational approach to prefrontal cortex, cognitive control and schizophrenia: Recent developments and current challenges. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London (B): Biological Sciences, 351, 1515-1527.
19. Cohen, R. L., & Sandberg, T. (1977). Relation between intelligence and short-term memory. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 534-554.
20. Cohen, J. D., & Servan-Schreiber, D. (1992). Context, cortex, and dopamine: a connectionist approach to behavior and biology in schizophrenia. Psychological Review, 99, 45-77.
21. Conway, A. R. A., & Engle, R. W. (1996). Individual differences in working memory capacity: More evidence for a general capacity theory. Memory, 4, 577-590.
22. Cowan, N. (1999). An embedded-processes model of working memory. In A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds.), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 62-101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23. Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87-185.
24. Craik, F. I. M., & Birtwistle, J. (1971). Proactive inhibition in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 91, 120-123.
25. Craik, F. I. M., & Levy, B. A. (1970). Semantic and acoustic information in primary memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 86, 77-82.
26. Crawford, J. R., Mychalkiw, B., Johnson, D. A., & Moore, J. W. (1996). WAIS-R shortforms: Criterion validity in healthy and clinical samples. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 35, 638-640.
27. Crosson, B., Rao, S. M., Woodley, S. J., Rosen, A. C., Bobholz, J. A., Mayer, A., Cunningham, J. M., Hammeke, T. A., Fuller, S. A., Binder, J. R., Cox, R. W., & Stein, E. A. (1999). Mapping of semantic, phonological, and orthographic verbal working memory in normal adults with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuropsychology, 13, 171-187.
28. Crowder, R. G. (1979). Similarity and serial order in memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Vol. 13. New York: Academic Press.
29. Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450-466.
30. Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1983). Individual differences in integrating information between and within sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9, 561-584.
31. Daneman, M., & Merikle, P. M. (1996). Working memory and language comprehension: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(4), 422-433.
32. Davelaar, E. J., & Usher, M. (2001). Exploring a computational account of item shortterm memory. In The Third International Memory Conference (ICOM-3), Valencia, Spain, July 16-21.
33. Dixon, P., Le Fevre, J., & Twilley, L. C. (1989). World knowledge and working memory as predictors of reading skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 465-472.
34. Duncan, J., Emslie, H., Williams, P., Johnson, R., & Freer, C. (1995). Intelligence and the frontal lobe: The organization of goal-directed behavior. Cognitive Psychology, 30, 257-303.
35. Duncan, J., Seitz, R. J., Kolodny, J., Bor, D., Herzog, H., Ahmed, A., Newell, F. N., & Emslie, H. A. (2000). Neural basis for general intelligence. Science, 289(July 21), 457-460.
36. Engle, R. W., Cantor, J., & Carullo, J. J. (1992). Individual differences in working memory and comprehension: A test of four hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 972-992.
37. Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. (1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309-331.
38. Ernst, G. W., & Newell, A. (1969). GPS: A case study in generality and problem solving. New York: Academic Press.
39. Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211-245.
40. Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2000). Differential roles for visuospatial and verbal working memory in situation model construction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 61-83.
41. Gabrieli, J. D. E., Poldrack, R. A., & Desmond, J. E. (1998). The role of left prefrontal cortex in language and memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95, 906-913.
42. Gilhooly, K. J., Logie, R. H., Wetherick, N. E., & Wynn, V. (1993). Working memory and strategies in syllogistic reasoning tasks. Memory & Cognition, 21, 115-124.
43. Gilhooly, K. J., Logie, R. H., & Wynn, V. (1999). Syllogistic reasoning tasks, working memory, and skill. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 11, 473-498.
44. Glanzer, M. (1972). Storage mechanisms in recall. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 5). New York: Academic Press.
45. Goldman, S., & Varma, S. (1995). CAPing the construction-integration model of discourse comprehension. In C. A. Mannes (Ed.), Discourse comprehension: Essays in honor of Walter Kintsch (pp. 337-358). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
46. Goshen-Gottstein, Y., Ashkenazi, A., & Usher, M. (submitted). Proactive interference attenuates recency in the continuous distractor task but not in free recall.
47. Greeno, J. G. (1973). The structure of memory and the process of solving problems. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Contempary issues in cognitive psychology: The Loyola symposium. Washington, DC: Winston.
48. Grier, J. B. (1971). Nonparametric indexes for sensitivity and bias: Computing formulas. Psychological Bulletin, 75, 424-429.
49. Gunter, T. C., Jackson, J. L., & Mulder, G. (1995). Language, memory, and aging: An electrophysiological exploration of the N400 during reading of memory-demanding sentences. Psychophysiology, 32, 215-229.
50. Haarmann, H. J., Cameron, K. A., & Ruchkin, D. S. (in press). Short-term semantic retention during on-line sentence comprehension: Brain potential evidence from filler-gap constructions. Cognitive Brain Research.
51. Haarmann, H. J., Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1997). Aphasic sentence comprehension as a resource deficit: A computational approach. Brain and Language, 59, 76-120.
52. Haarmann, H. J., & Kraut, O. (2001). The effect of thematic role bindings on storage in verbal short-term memory. In The Third International Memory Conference (ICOM-3), Valencia, Spain, July 16-21.
53. Haarmann, H. J., & Usher, M. (2001). Maintainance of semantic information in capacity-limited item short-term memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 568-578.
54. Halford, G. S., Maybery, M. T., & Bain, J. D. (1988). Set-size effects in primary memory: An age-related capacity limitation. Memory & Cognition, 16, 480-487.
55. Hanten, G., & Martin, R. C. (2000). Contributions of phonological and semantic short-term memory to sentence processing: Evidence from two cases of closed head injury in children. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 335-361.
56. Howe, M. L., Rabinowitz, F. M., & Powell, T. L. (1998). Individual differences in working memory and reasoning-remembering relationships in solving class-inclusion problems. Memory & Cognition, 26, 1089-1101.
57. Howell, D. C. (1997). Statistical methods for psychology (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press.
58. Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (1997). Distributed representations of structure: A theory of analogical access and mapping. Psychological Review, 104, 427-466.
59. Jackson, M. D., & McClelland, J. L. (1979). Processing determinants of reading speed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 151-181.
60. Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review, 99, 122-149.
61. Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2000). Working memory capacity, proactive interference, and divided attention: Limits on long-term memory retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 336-358.
62. Kane, M. J., Bleckley, M. K., Conway, A. R. A., & Engle, R. W. (2001). A controlled attention view of working-memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 169-183.
63. King, J., & Just, M. A. (1991). Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580-602.
64. Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
65. Kintsch, W., Healy, A. F., Hegarty, M., Pennington, B. F., & Salthouse, T. A. (1999). Eight questions and some general issues. In A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds.), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 62 101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
66. Klein, K., & Fiss, W. H. (1999). The reliability and stability of the Turner and Engle working memory task. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 31, 429-432.
67. LaPointe, L. B., & Engle, R. W. (1990). Simple and complex word spans as measures of working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 1118-1133.
68. Levy, B. A., & Baddeley, A. (1971). Recall of semantic clusters in primary memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 23, 8-13.
69. Linebarger, M. C., Schwartz, M., & Saffran, E. M. (1983). Sensitivity to grammatical structure in so-called agrammatic aphasics. Cognition, 13, 361-392.
70. Martin, R. C. (1990). The consequences of reduced memory span for the comprehension of semantic versus syntactic information. Brain and Language, 38, 1-20.
71. Martin, R., & Freedman, M. (2001). Verbal working memory: The ins and outs of phonological and lexical-semantic retention. In H. L. Roediger, J. S. Nairne, I. Neath, & A. M. Suprenant (Eds.), The nature of remembering: Essays in honor of Robert G. Crowder.
72. Martin, R. C., & Romani, C. (1994). Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension: A multiple-components view. Neuropsychology, 9(4), 506-523.
73. Martin, N., Saffran, E. M., & Dell, G. S. (1996). Recovery in deep dysphasia: Evidence for a relation between auditory-verbal STM capacity and lexical errors in repetition. Brain and Language, 52, 83-113.
74. Martin, R. C., Shelton, J. R., & Yaffee, L. S. (1994). Language processing and working memory: Evidence for separate phonological and semantic capacities. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 83-111.
75. Masson, M. E. J., & Miller, J. A. (1983). Working memory and individual differences in comprehension and memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 314-318.
76. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
77. Miyake, A., Carpenter, P. A., & Just, M. A. (1994a). A capacity approach to syntactic comprehension disorders: Making normal adults perform like aphasic patients. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 11(6), 671-717.
78. Miyake, A., Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1994b). Working memory constraints on the resolution of lexical ambiguity: Maintaining multiple interpretations in neutral contexts. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 175-202.
79. Munte, T. F., Schiltz, K., & Kutas, M. (1998). When temporal terms belie conceptual order. Nature, 395, 71-73.
80. Nairne, J. S., Neath, L, & Serra, M. (1997). Proactive interference plays a role in the word length effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 541-545.
81. Nunnally, J. (1978). Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
82. Oberauer, K., & Süß, H. M. (2000). Inhibition in working memory. A comment on Jenkins, Myerson, Hale, and Fry (1999). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7, 727-733.
83. Pollack, L., & Norman, D. A. (1964). A non-parametric analysis of recognition experiments. Psychonomical Science, 1, 125-126.
84. Potter, M. C. (1993). Very short-term conceptual memory. Memory & Cognition, 21(2), 156-161.
85. Raven, J. C., Court, J. H., & Raven, J. (1977). Standard progressive matrices. London: H.K. Lewis & Company.
86. Raser, G. (1972). Recoding of semantic and acoustic information in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 692-697.
87. Romani, C., & Martin, R. (1999). A deficit in the short-term retention of lexical-semantic information: Forgetting words but remembering a story. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 56-77.
88. Spearman, C. (1904). "General intelligence," objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201-293.
89. Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentation. Psychological Monographs, 74, entire issue.
90. St. George, M., Mannes, S., & Hoffman, J. E. (1997). Individual differences in inference generation: An ERP analysis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 776-787.
91. Shulman, H. G. (1970). Encoding and retention of semantic and phonemic information in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 9, 499-508.
92. Shulman, H. G. (1972). Semantic confusion errors in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 221-227.
93. Stromswold, K., Caplan, D., Alpert, N., & Rauch, S. (1996). Localization of syntactic comprehension by positron emission tomography. Brain and Language, 52, 452-473.
94. Turner, M. L., & Engle, R. W. (1989). Is working memory capacity task dependent? Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 127-154.
95. Usher, M., & Cohen, J. D. (1999). Short-term memory and selection processes in a frontal-lobe model. In D. Heinke, G. W. Humphries, & A. Olsen (Eds.), Connectionist models in Cognitive Neuroscience (pp. 78-91). London: Springer.
96. Usher, M., Cohen, J. D., Haarmann, H. J., & Horn, D. (2001). Neural mechanism for the magical number 4: Competitive interactions and non-linear oscillations (Commentary on target article by Cowan). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 151-152.
97. Waters, G., & Caplan, D. (1996). The measurement of verbal working memory capacity and its relation to reading comprehension. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A, 51-79.
98. Wechsler, D. A. (1981). Wechsler adult intelligence scales (revised). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
99. Wickens, D. D., Moody, M. J., & Dow, R. (1981). The nature and timing of the retrieval process and of interference effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 1-20.