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Selective updating of sentences: Introducing a new measure of verbal working memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

DANIEL FELLMAN ,
ANNA SOVERI ,
CHARLOTTE VIKTORSSON ,
SARAH HAGA ,
JOHANNES NYLUND ,
SANNA JOHANSSON ,
JAKOB EDMAN ,
FELIX VON RENTELN  and
MATTI LAINE
DANIEL FELLMAN*
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
ANNA SOVERI
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
CHARLOTTE VIKTORSSON
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
SARAH HAGA
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
JOHANNES NYLUND
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
SANNA JOHANSSON
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
JAKOB EDMAN
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
FELIX VON RENTELN
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
MATTI LAINE
Affiliation:
Abo Akademi University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Daniel Fellman, Department of Psychology, Abo Akademi University, Fabriksgatan 2, FIN-20500 Turku, Finland. E-mail: dfellman@abo.fi
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Abstract

Working memory (WM) is one of the most studied cognitive constructs in psychology, because of its relevance to human performance, including language processing. When measuring verbal WM for sentences, the reading span task is the most widely used WM measure for this purpose. However, comparable sentence-level updating tasks are missing. Hence, we sought to develop a WM updating task, which we termed the selective updating of sentences (SUS) task, which taps the ability to constantly update sentences. In two experiments with Finnish-speaking young adults, we examined the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the SUS task. It exhibited adequate internal consistency and correlated positively with well-established working memory measures. Moreover, the SUS task also showed positive correlations with verbal episodic memory tasks employing sentences and paragraphs. These results indicate that the SUS task is a promising new task for psycholinguistic studies addressing verbal WM updating.

Keywords

reliabilitysentence processingupdatingvalidityverbal working memory
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 275 - 301
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

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