Durham E - Theses The relationship between storage and processing in working memory

This thesis reports a series of eight experiments that investigate the detailed nature of the factors underpinning working memory performance in children and adults. Experiments 1 to 3 examined the role of resource-sharing and intrinsic memory demands in complex span performance in 7and 9-year-olds. The results do not support a resource-sharing explanation and are consistent with the view that complex memory span performance is disrupted by processing activities that divert attentional resource from storage. Experiments 4 and 5 investigated the impact of the similarity of processing and storage stimuli on span performance of7to 9-yearold children. The data provide evidence for performance-related decrements under circumstances of stimulus similarity. Experiments 6 to 8 investigated the impact of the lexical status of memory and processing stimuli on children's and adults' complex memory performance with the aim of exploring possible mechanisms of interference in working memory. In 9and 10-year old children and adults, word recall was markedly impaired by monitoring words compared with nonwords. A converse disturbance of nonword recall by nonword monitoring was consistently found for adults, but was either absent or less marked across experiments in the child groups. Overall, the data identify four main factors that mediate complex span performance in children and adults: task duration, attentional resources, taskswitching efficiency, and interference between processing and storage stimuli. The findings are discussed in terms of existing theoretical models of working memory.