WORKING-MEMORY CAPACITY AS LONG-TERM-MEMORY ACTIVATION - AN INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES APPROACH

One explanation of the correlation often observed between working-memo ry span scores and reading comprehension is that individuals differ in level of activation available for long-term memory units. Two experim ents used the fan manipulation to test this idea. In Experiment 1, hig h- and low-working-memory Ss learned a set of unrelated sentences vary ing in the number of shared concepts (fan) and then performed speeded recognition for those sentences. Low-working-memory Ss showed a larger increase iri recognition time as fan increased. When the slope of the fan effect was partialed out of the relationship between working-memo ry span and verbal abilities, the relationship was reduced to nonsigni ficance. In Experiment 2, Ss learned thematically related sentences th at varied in fan. Low-span Ss showed the positive fan effect typically found with thematically unrelated sentences, whereas high-span Ss sho wed a negative fan effect. The results are discussed in terms of a gen eral capacity theory.