FURTHER EVIDENCE RELATING MENTAL-CAPACITY, SHORT-TERM STORAGE SPACE, AND OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

According to R. Case, a subject's Total Processing Space is the sum of his Short-term Storage Space (STSS) and Operating Space (OS). Case ha s hypothesized a trade-off between the two, that is, an increase in op erational efficiency leads to a decrease in Operating Space and conseq uently more Short-term Storage Space is available for information proc essing. To test this hypothesis 137 high school students were rested t o estimate operational efficiency (assigned a time limit to finish the Figural Intersection Test), Pascual-Leone's Structural M-capacity, M( s) (i.e., STSS in Case's model), and Functional M-capacity, M(f). Besi des other results a significant positive correlation of .37 was obtain ed between operational efficiency and M(s)/STSS, which suggests that s ubjects find it difficult to distribute attentional load from one rese rve (OS) to another (STSS).