Traning Strategy Use and its Effects on Working Memory Capacity

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether strategy use affects the storage component of a working memory task. In Experiment 1, all 21 participants were given training to create stories from lists of to-be-remembered words (i.e., chaining) within a short-term memory task (i.e., including only a storage task). Short-term memory task performance and working memory span task performance were examined before and after training. Both short-term memory and working memory task performance improved from pretest to post-test. In Experiment 2, the same strategy training was given to 30 participants. In addition, another 30 participants were assigned to a control condition. Participants in the control condition were given no strategy instruction. Participants in the control and training groups were matched on their level of strategy use (more-strategic, less-strategic) during the short-term memory pretest. Participants in both groups improved from pretest to post-test on the short-term memory test; however, only participants in the training condition improved from pretest to post-test on the working memory span task. Participants who were classified as more-strategic outperformed participants who were classified as less-strategic on all measures including reading comprehension. These results indicate that working memory task performance is greatly affected by strategy use.