Working Memory

Question 1

ospan stands for

Answer 1

operation span

Question 2

ospan

Answer 2

test participants are presented with a series of math problems followed by target words (for example, “12 × 8 = 96, WINE”). Participants must read the problem out loud, say whether it is true or false, and then read the target word. After a series of 2 to 10 operations such as these, participants are asked to recall all of the target words in the order in which they were presented. The average length of the lists that are recalled in correct serial order is the participant’s operation span.

Question 3

rspan aka

Answer 3

reading span

Question 4

rspan

Answer 4

The RSPAN involves reading a series of sentence–letter strings (e.g., “Walking in the park is a very enjoyable activity.” (Does this make sense?) M). In the RSPAN, individuals read the sentence aloud and are asked to verify whether the sentence makes sense. Individuals then read the letter aloud. At the end of the series, they write down the sequence of letters. In both the OSPAN and the RSPAN, each series consists of a random number of strings between two and five. Individuals are tested on three series of each length (12 in total). For both OSPAN and RSPAN, the dependent variable is the total number of words/letters correctly recalled.

Question 5

Conway, Cowan, Bunting,

Therriault, & Minkoff, 2002

Answer 5

an important individual-differences
variable and accounts for a significant portion of variance
in general intellectual ability

Question 6

Schmader &

Johns, 2003

Answer 6

Social psychologists have revealed that students under stereotype threat
suffer reduced WMC and that WMC mediates the effect
of stereotype threat on standardized tests

Question 7

Kane & Engle, 2002,

Answer 7

By “executive attention” we mean an attention capability whereby memory representations are maintained in a
highly active state in the face of interference, and these
representations may reflect action plans, goal states, or
task-relevant stimuli in the environment. Critical to our
view is that, while the active maintenance of information
can be useful in many situations, it is most necessary under
conditions of interference. This is because in the absence
of interference, task-relevant information or goals may be
easily retrieved from long-term memory as needed. Under
interference-rich conditions, however, incorrect information and response tendencies, are likely to be retrieved, and
so such contexts set the occasion for the reliance on active maintenance of information.

Question 8

Klein and

Boals (2001)

Answer 8

found that individuals who reported more
life event stress scored lower on operation span than did
low life event stress individuals. The interpretation was
that stressful events captured attentional resources, which
reduced ability to perform the WM span task.

Question 9

Kane & Engle, 2002

Answer 9

neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have revealed that WM function is particularly dependent on cells in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which
has traditionally held a prominent status in the biological
approach to studying complex goal-directed human behavior