Date of Award

Summer 1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Danielle S. McNamara

Committee Member

Elaine M. Justice

Committee Member

Frederick G. Freeman

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65 S36

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether strategy use affects the storage component of a working memory task. In Experiment 1, all 21 participants were given training to create stories from lists of to-be-remembered words (i.e., chaining) within a short-term memory task (i.e., including only a storage task). Short-term memory task performance and working memory span task performance were examined before and after training. Both short-term memory and working memory task performance improved from pretest to post-test. In Experiment 2, the same strategy training was given to 30 participants. In addition, another 30 participants were assigned to a control condition. Participants in the control condition were given no strategy instruction. Participants in the control and training groups were matched on their level of strategy use (more-strategic, less-strategic) during the short-term memory pretest. Participants in both groups improved from pretest to post-test on the short-term memory test; however, only participants in the training condition improved from pretest to post-test on the working memory span task. Participants who were classified as more-strategic outperformed participants who were classified as less-strategic on all measures including reading comprehension. These results indicate that working memory task performance is greatly affected by strategy use.

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DOI

10.25777/nq8v-n545

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