Memory Span - From Simple Span To Complex Span

From Simple Span To Complex Span

Research in the 1970s has shown that memory span with digits and words is only weakly related to performance in complex cognitive tasks such as text comprehension, which are assumed to depend on short-term memory. This questioned the interpretation of memory span as a measure of the capacity of a central short-term memory or working memory. Daneman and Carpenter introduced an extended version of the memory span task which they called reading span.

The reading span task was the first instance of the family of complex span tasks, which differ from the traditional simple span tasks by adding a processing demand to the requirement to remember a list of items. In complex span tasks encoding of the memory items (e.g., words) alternates with brief processing episodes (e.g., reading sentences). For example, the operation span task combines verification of brief mathematical equations such as "2+6/2 = 5?" with memory for a word or a letter that follows immediately after each equation. Complex-span tasks have also been shown to be closely related to many other aspects of complex cognitive performance besides language comprehension, among other things to measures of fluid intelligence.