scholarly journals Short-term memory span: insights from sign language

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 997-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mrim Boutla ◽  
Ted Supalla ◽  
Elissa L Newport ◽  
Daphne Bavelier
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Majid Manoochehri

Memory span in humans has been intensely studied for more than a century. In spite of the critical role of memory span in our cognitive system, which intensifies the importance of fundamental determinants of its evolution, few studies have investigated it by taking an evolutionary approach. Overall, we know hardly anything about the evolution of memory components. In the present study, I briefly review the experimental studies of memory span in humans and non-human animals and shortly discuss some of the relevant evolutionary hypotheses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (22) ◽  

It is known that digits have a positive effect on the performance of short term memory (STM) span and it is called the digit superiority effect. This study aims to examine the effect of familiar stimuli (digits, colors, digit names, color names, and words) on STM span. In order to measure STM capacity, a memory span task was used including the digit, word, and color span lists. 91 participants (44 female, 47 male) aged between 18-27 (M = 21,43, SD = 1.50) participated in the study that consisted of three different experiments. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that there was a significant difference between the digit name and word with regard to span size and total span. In Experiment 2 and 3, the main effect of familiar stimulus type on total span and span size was significant, and also the difference between all types of stimuli was significant (Experiment II, digit name>word=color name; Experiment III, digit>digit name>color name>color). The common result obtained from all experiments is that digits are superior with regard to STM span than other familiar stimuli types such as words, color names, colors. This study confirmed that digit superiority effect is indispensable on verbal and visual STM span. Keywords Digit superiority, short term memory, memory span


1981 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Poizner ◽  
Don Newkirk ◽  
Ursula Bellugi ◽  
Edward S. Klima

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
DINO CHINCOTTA ◽  
GEOFFREY UNDERWOOD

Two experiments examine the view that the variation in bilingual short-term memory capacity is determined by differential rates of subvocal rehearsal between the languages. Auditory memory span and articulation time were measured for three bilingual groups who spoke Finnish at home and Swedish at school (FS), and either Finnish (FF) or Swedish (SS) in both the home and the school. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that memory span for words varied in a lawful manner as a function of both articulation time and language dominance for SS and FF. For FS, however, an equivalent memory span between the languages was noted despite a shorter articulation time in Finnish than Swedish. Experiment 2 found that for items with no pre-existing lexical representations (nonwords), articulation time was a more reliable predictor of memory span than language dominance for all three groups. The finding that within-language memory span was greater for short items than long items shows that, ceteris paribus, bilingual short-term memory capacity is sensitive to the effects of word length in both the dominant and non-dominant language. Taken together, these findings moderate the view that bilingual short-term memory capacity is mediated exclusively by subvocal rehearsal and indicate an influential contribution from factors related to language fluency and the strength of lexico-semantic representations.


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