Core verbal working-memory capacity: The limit in words retained without covert articulation
Open Access
- 1 July 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
- Vol. 62 (7), 1420-1429
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210802453977
Abstract
Verbal working memory may combine phonological and conceptual units. We disentangle their contributions by extending a prior procedure (Chen & Cowan, 2005) in which items recalled from lists of previously seen word singletons and of previously learned word pairs depended on the list length in chunks. Here we show that a constant capacity of about 3 chunks holds across list lengths and list types, provided that covert phonological rehearsal is prevented. What remains is a core verbal working-memory capacity.Keywords
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