Interference in short-term memory: The magical number two (or three) in sentence processing

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Magical Number

The search for fixed generalizable limits of “pure STM” capacity: Problems with theoretical proposals based on independent chunks

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Anders Ericsson ◽  
Elizabeth P. Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Deliberate Practice ◽  
Functional Independence ◽  
Experimental Techniques ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Magical Number ◽  
Task Environments

Cowan's experimental techniques cannot constrain subject's recall of presented information to distinct independent chunks in short-term memory (STM). The encoding of associations in long-term memory contaminates recall of pure STM capacity. Even in task environments where the functional independence of chunks is convincingly demonstrated, individuals can increase the storage of independent chunks with deliberate practice – well above the magical number four.

scholarly journals Enhanced performance on a sentence comprehension task in congenitally blind adults

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Loiotile ◽  
Connor Lane ◽  
Akira Omaki ◽  
Marina Bedny
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Comprehension Task ◽  
Congenitally Blind

People born blind habitually experience linguistic utterances in the absence of visual cues and activate “visual” cortices during sentence comprehension. Do blind individuals show superior performance on sentence processing tasks? Congenitally blind (n=25) and age and education matched sighted (n=52) participants answered yes/no who-did-what-to-whom questions for auditorily-presented sentences, some of which contained a grammatical complexity manipulation (long-distance movement dependency or garden path). Short-term memory was measured with a forward and backward letter-spans. A battery of control tasks included two speeded math tasks and vocabulary and reading tasks from Woodcock Johnson III. The blind group outperformed the sighted on the sentence comprehension task, particularly for garden-path sentences, and on short-term memory span tasks, but performed similar to the sighted on control tasks. Sentence comprehension performance was not correlated with span performance, suggesting independent enhancements.

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