Working memory (WM) has been described as an interface between cognition and action, or a system for access to a limited amount of information needed in complex cognition. Access to morphological information is needed for comprehending and producing sentences. The present study probed WM for morphologically complex word forms in Finnish, a morphologically rich language. We studied monomorphemic...

Memory span for a list of phonologically similar words is generally worse than memory span for a list of phonologically dissimilar words, a finding that is called the phonological similarity effect. This finding has often been cited as evidence for the use of phonological coding in short-term memory and working memory. However, some studies have demonstrated a reversal of the phonological simil...

Schmeichel (2007) reported that performing an initial task before completing a working memory span task can lower span scores and suggested that the effect was due to depleted cognitive resources. We showed that the detrimental effect of prior tasks depends on a match between the stimuli used in the span task and the preceding task. A task requiring participants to ignore words reduced performa...