Working memory capacity and strategy use

In this study, we examine the role of strategy use in working memory (WM) t asks by providing shortterm memory (STM) task strategy training to particip ants. In Experiment I, the participants received four sessions of training to use a story-formation (i.e., chaining) strategy. There were substantial improvements from pretest to posttest (after training) in terms of both STM and WM task performance. Experiment 2 demonstrated that WM task improvemen t did not occur for control participants, who were given the same amount of practice but were not provided with strategy instructions. An assessment o f participants' strategy use on the STM task before training indicated that more strategic participants displayed better WM task performance and bette r verbal skills. These results support our hypothesis that strategy use inf luences performance on WM tasks.