[PDF] Individual differences in semantic short-term memory capacity and reading comprehension | Semantic Scholar (2024)

Although the Semantic Conceptual task generally failed to predict incremental variance in either verbal abilities or general fluid intelligence beyond the other Conceptual tasks or STM span tasks, that stronger relation to working memory span tasks did not translate into strong prediction of cognitive individual differences.

The results present evidence that the Spanish adaptation of both versions of the Conceptual Span task can yield reliable estimates of the active maintenance of semantic representations in verbal working memory, an under-investigated ability that is involved in diverse domains such as episodic memory retrieval, language processing, and comprehension.

A potential double dissociation is examined in situations where the secondary tasks could not compete with encoding, using a modified phonological memory task and a potential mechanism for maintaining semantic representations is discussed.

It can be concluded that semantic storage plays a more important role in children’s reading comprehension than previously thought.

A potential double dissociation is examined in situations where the secondary tasks could not compete with encoding, using a modified phonological memory task and a potential mechanism for maintaining semantic representations is discussed.

A study of reading span in 7- to 11-year-old children that addresses several contemporary theoretical issues and demonstrates the potential for reconstructive influences to shape working memory performance among children.

A novel cued sentence recall paradigm is developed to assess the effects of two factors on sentence recall accuracy at short-term and long-term stages, and provides a basis for using sentence imageability and subsequent memory performance as probes of semantic engagement in short- term memory for sentences.

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The results suggest that sentence span tasks are unreliable unless measurements are made of both their sentence processing and recall components, and that the predictive value of these tasks for reading comprehension abilities lies in the overlap of operations rather than in limitations in verbal working memory that apply to both.

The results of all 3 experiments support a general capacity explanation for the relationship between working memory and comprehension.

The results of the meta-analysis support Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) claim that measures thatTap the combined processing and storage capacity of working memory are better predictors of comprehension than are measures that tap only the storage capacity.

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