Effect of focus on verbal working memory: critical role of the focus word in reading.

Full Abstract

The effect of focus on working memory was investigated with the reading span test (RST). In two experiments, the span scores and the number of intrusion errors were compared between the focused RST the and the nonfocused RST. Focus word was defined as the most important word for comprehending a sentence. For the focused RST, the target word to be maintained was the focus word for the sentence. In the nonfocused RST, however, the target word was not the focus word for the sentence. The results of both experiments showed that RST span scores were higher for the focused RST than for the nonfocused RST, and intrusion errors were found to increase for the nonfocused RST. In Experiment 2, the effect of focus was compared between high-span and low-span subjects. An effect of sentence length was also investigated. The result showed that low-span subjects were more affected than were high-span subjects by whether the word to be remembered was the focus word. The effect of sentence length was not confirmed. These findings suggest that the low-span subjects had deficits in their ability to establish and/or inhibit mental focus when faced with conflict situations in reading.

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Author information

Author/s: Osak, Mariko (M); Nishizaki, Yukiko (Y); Komori, Mie (M); Osaka, Naoyuki (N);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Mino, Japan. osaka(-atsign-)post01.osaka-gaidai.ac.jp

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jun; vol 30 (issue 4) : pp 562-71

Dates: Created 2002/08/19; Completed 2002/09/11; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12184557, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Memory
Reading

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