Some Observations on Working Memory Tasks and Issues in Cognitive Psychology

This paper reviews a variety of experimental paradigms that have been used in the study of working memory. Special emphasis is placed on issues that are relevant to language processing and comprehension. The first section describes the features and procedures of simple and complex span measures. The demand characteristics of these tasks and their implications for task performance are examined. The second section looks at experimental issues such as the use of closed and open sets of items in the memory span task, and the relevance of findings such as the phonological similarity effect and the word length effect on the nature of representation in working memory. The final section explores general theoretical issues that have emerged since the Baddeley and Hitch (1974) model of working memory. Directions for future research are discussed.