We introduce and empirically evaluate the strategy-affordance hypothesis, which holds that individual differences in strategy use will mediate the relationship between performance on a working memory (WM) span task and another cognitive task only when the same strategies are afforded by both tasks. One-hundred and forty eight participants completed basic memory tasks and verbal span tasks that ...

Consensus is building that stereotype threat interferes with working memory, but how so? Grounded in the dual-process framework of Kane and Engle, the authors examined the extent to which stereotype threat interferes with one’s ability to maintain task goals in working memory and one’s ability to choose between conflicting responses. One hundred eighty-seven Montana State University (MSU) men w...

The study introduces a rhythm memory task and compares performance of musicians and non-musicians. The rhythm span task with increasing and decreasing sequence length according to the participants’ performance measures the individual memory capacity for musical rhythms. Results show that musicians perform significantly better on the rhythm span task indicating that memory capacity for rhythms i...

In recent years, a number of memory span findings have been attributed to the operation of an articulatory loop (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). These attributions have been made on the basis of finding a correspondence between span differences and pronunciation rate differences. This experiment explored articulatory loop explanations for two material effects in memory span: the word-frequency effect ...

The present investigation examined the sexual dimorphic patterns of cardiorespiratory fitness to working memory in preadolescent children (age range: 7.7-10.9). Data were collected in three separate studies (Study 1: n = 97, 42 females; Study 2: n = 95, 45 females; Study 3: n = 84, 37 females). All participants completed a cardiorespiratory fitness assessment in addition to a specific measure o...