While working memory capacity is associated with superior performance on a number of tasks, could it paradoxically sometimes be associated with suboptimal performance? Corbin et al. (2010, Judgment and Decision Making 5(2), 110–115) found that, in a between-subjects design, higher WMC is associated with a larger risky-choice framing effect, traditionally conceived of as a departure from rational principles. Such surprising findings are of potentially great theoretical importance; yet the original study was underpowered. In this registered report, we aimed to replicate and extend the original findings, by conducting an online experiment among 425 North Americans. To extend the findings beyond the specific single tasks used in the original study, we used three WMC tasks with different processing components and six framing problems involving human lives. In a close replication, the frame significantly interacted with neither the Ospan short absolute score nor the Ospan short partial score in predicting ratings on the disease-framing problem. Similarly, in an extended replication, a composite WMC score did not significantly interact with the frame in predicting ratings on three framing problems involving human lives. The Bayes factors showed that the data were 3 to 10 times more likely under the null hypothesis of no interaction between WMC and frame. Taken together, these findings show an absence of association between the between-subjects risky-choice framing effect and WMC. This outcome is compatible with four out of the six theoretical accounts we considered, and is uniquely predicted by the default-interventionist dual-process account and the pragmatic inference account. Further research can more rigorously pit conflicting predictions of these accounts against each other.

The current study looks at the role working memory plays in risky-choice framing. Eighty-six participants took the Automatic OSPAN, a measurement of working memory; this was followed by a risky-choice framing task. Participants with high working memory capacities demonstrated well pronounced framing effects, while those with low working memory capacities did not. This pattern suggests that, in a typical risky-choice decision task, elaborative encoding of task information by those with high working memory capacity may lead them to a more biased decision compared to those with low working memory.

This study aims to understand the role of self-regulated learning (SRL) and its different processes in the relationship between working memory (WM) and problem-solving accuracy in math in primary school children. A sample of 269 primary school children (M age = 8.84, SD = 0.81, 58% boys) participated in this study. Tasks were used as intervention resources to assess children’s WM (i.e., reading and computation span tasks), SRL (i.e., a digital game), and performance (i.e., the performance in the game, as well as a traditional math problem). Through structural equation modeling, results revealed that WM predicted children’s SRL and their problem-solving accuracy in math, such that those with higher capability for temporary storage attained better accuracy. Accordingly, children’s SRL explained the relationship between WM capacity and problem-solving accuracy in math; such that the indirect effect of WM capacity through SRL was lower on problem-solving accuracy in math. Results indicated that the planning phase was a greater indicator of students’ SRL in problem-solving accuracy in math. These results highlight the importance of SRL competencies in explaining children’s performance in problem-solving in math.

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the relationship between phonological short-term memory (PSTM), working memory capacity (WMC), and the level of mastery of L2 grammar. Grammatical mastery was operationalized as the ability to produce and comprehend English passive voice with reference to explicit and implicit (or highly automatized) knowledge. Correlational analysis showed that PSTM was related to implicit productive knowledge while WMC was linked to explicit productive knowledge. However, regression analysis showed that those relationships were weak and mediated by overall mastery of target language grammar, operationalized as final grades in a grammar course.

Our study investigated how attention paid to a target syntactic construction causative had is related to the storage capacity and attention regulation function of working memory (WM) and how these WM abilities moderate the change of knowledge of the target construction in different input conditions. 80 Sri Lankan learners of English were exposed to examples of the target construction in explicit and implicit learning conditions and their eye movements were tracked as they read the input. Correlational and multiple regression analyses indicated a very strong relationship between WM abilities and gains in the knowledge of the target construction. WM scores were closely associated with gains in receptive knowledge in all input conditions, but they had a weaker link to the improvement of productive knowledge in the implicit learning conditions. The amount of attention paid to input was also strongly related to WM abilities.

Some individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) show decrements in long-term memory (LTM) while other individuals do not. The theory of cognitive reserve suggests that individuals with greater pre-morbid intellectual enrichment are protected from disease-related cognitive decline. How intellectual enrichment affords this benefit remains poorly understood. The present study tested an exploratory meditational hypothesis whereby working memory (WM) capacity may mediate the relationship between intellectual enrichment and verbal LTM decline in MS. Intellectual enrichment, verbal LTM, and WM capacity were estimated with the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, delayed recall of the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised and Logical Memory of the Wechsler Memory Scale, and Digit Span Total, respectively. Intellectual enrichment predicted LTM (B=.54; p=.003) and predicted WM capacity (B=.91; p<.001). WM capacity predicted LTM, (B=.44; p<.001) and fully mediated the relationship between intellectual enrichment (B=.24; p=.27) and LTM (B=.33, p=.03), Sobel test, Z=3.31, p<.001. These findings implicate WM capacity as an underlying mechanism of cognitive reserve and are an initial first step in understanding the relationship between intellectual enrichment, WM, and LTM in MS. (JINS, 2014, 20, 1–5)

This study investigated the role of working memory capacity on the making of reinstatement and causal elaborative inferences during the reading of natural texts. In order to determine participants' working memory capacity, they were asked to take the reading span task before they took part in the study. Those participants that were identified as high or low working memory capacity readers were asked to perform a lexical decision task in two conditions: pre-inference and inference. In the pre-inference condition, target words representing reinstatement or causal elaborative inferences were presented immediately before the sentences that were predicted to prompt them. In the inference condition, the target words were presented immediately after the sentences that were predicted to prompt the inferences. Results indicated that, for the high working memory capacity readers, lexical decision times were faster at the inference compared to the pre-inference locations for both types of inferences. In the case of low working capacity readers, lexical decision times were faster at the inference compared to the pre-inference locations only for reinstatement inferences. These findings suggest that working memory capacity plays a role in the making of causal inferences during the comprehension of natural texts.

This paper reports three studies of bilingual lexical processing, using the semantic competitor priming (SCP) method of Lee and Williams (2001). Study 1 found a trend of within-language SCP effect for Chinese–English bilinguals with both higher and lower levels of vocabulary knowledge. There was also a cross-language SCP effect, but this was restricted to bilinguals with a lower level of vocabulary knowledge. Study 2 found a cross-language SCP effect for Chinese learners of English in the classroom context. Study 3 found both within- and cross-language SCP effects for bilinguals with study-abroad experience as well as Chinese–English classroom learners who had a higher working memory capacity. Those findings are interpreted in terms of a dynamic view of bilingual language selection.

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed.

The capacity of working memory has been suggested to differ among people and these differences affect performance in a wide variety of cognitive tasks. This study explored electrophysiological correlates of individual differences in working memory capacity by means of event-related potentials. Thirty-four healthy students performed two- and five-choice reaction time tasks. In the two-choice reaction time (2CRT) task, two digits (3 and 7) were presented visually with probabilities of .20 and .80. In the five-choice reaction time (5CRT) task, five digits (3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) were presented equiprobably in a random order. Participants were required to press a button corresponding to each digit with a different finger. Working memory capacity of each participant was assessed by the reading span test originated by M. Daneman and P.A. Carpenter (1980). Participants with high reading span produced larger P300s than did persons with low reading span in the 5CRT task, but the difference was not significant in the 2CRT task. It had been suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity would affect initial stages of information processing as early as 300 ms after stimulus onset.