Many working memory (WM) models propose that the focus of attention (or primary memory) has a capacity limit of one to four items, and therefore, that performance on WM tasks involves retrieving some items from long-term (or secondary) memory (LTM). In the present study, we present evidence suggesting that recall of even one item on a WM task can involve retrieving it from LTM. The WM task requ...

I t has been widely claimed that the systems employed in tasks of immediate memory have a function in the comprehension of speech; these systems, it has been proposed, are used to hold a representation of the speech until a syntactic analysis and interpretation have been completed. Such a holding function is meant to be especially important where the sentences heard are long or complex. I t has...

Objective: The present study was hypothesized to investigate the beneficial effects of fresh, aged, and cooked garlic extracts on blood glucose and memory of diabetic rats induced by streptozocine (STZ). Material and Methods: Diabetes was induced by an intraperitoneal injection of STZ (60 mg/kg body weight). An oral dose of 1000 mg/kg of each garlic extract was given daily for 4 weeks after dia...

We report a series of experiments designed to explore the locus of the phonological deficit in dyslexia. Phonological processing of dyslexic adults is compared to that of age- and IQ-matched controls. Dyslexics' impaired performance on tasks involving nonwords suggests that sub-lexical phonological representations are deficient. Contrasting nonword repetition vs auditory nonword discrimination ...

The present study focuses on the functional interactions of cognition and manual action control. Particularly, we investigated the neurophysiological correlates of the dual-task costs of a manual-motor task (requiring grasping an object, holding it, and subsequently placing it on a target) for working memory (WM) domains (verbal and visuospatial) and processes (encoding and retrieval). Thirty p...

Previous research suggested that working memory (WM) does not play any significant role in visual search. In three experiments, we investigated the search difficulty and individual differences in WM capacity as determinants of WM involvement during visual search tasks, using both behavioral and electrophysiological markers [i.e., the contralateral delay activity (CDA), which is a marker for WM ...

We describe and evaluate a recall reconstruction hypothesis for working memory (WM), according to which items can be recovered from multiple memory representations. Across four experiments, participants recalled memoranda that were either integrated with or independent of the sentence content. We found consistently longer pauses accompanying the correct recall of integrated compared with indepe...

Previous studies have shown that working memory (WM) plays an important role in selective attention, sothat high WM load leads to inefficient distractor inhibition, in comparison with low WM load. In the present study, we examined the effect of WM on distractor processing while the extent of attentional focus was held constant. Our results show that WM load affected distractor processing only w...

Dual-task costs depend on the specific pairings of stimulus and response modalities. Such findings are analogous to domain-specific effects in the working memory (WM) literature, in which items compete for limited capacity when they involve related types of information. The present study explicitly examines the relationship between modality-pairing effects on dual-task costs and domain-specific...

Novel word learning is central to the flexibility inherent in the human language capacity. Word learning may partially depend on long-term memory formation during the assembly of phonological representations from orthographic inputs. In the present study, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examined the contributions of phonological control-a component of the verbal worki...