Abstract
Traditional models of memory assume that short-term memory, as measured by memory span, plays an important role in linguistic processing and the learning ofverbal information. Contradicting this view are findings from a brain-damaged patient, E.A., who, despite a verbal memory span of about two items, demonstrated normal sentence comprehension in a variety oftasks. She was, however, impaired whenever verbatim phonological information had to be maintained or learned. These results and those from other patients with reduced span suggest that the phonological storage capacity that is critical to memory span plays only a limited role in language processing, specifically in the maintenance and learning of phonological forms. Implications for models of short-term memory are discussed. It is argued that short-termmemory should be seen as deriving from the processing and retentive capacities of language processing modules, with span tasks drawing on only a subset of these modules.
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The preparation of this manuscript was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant DC 00218 to R. C. Martin at Rice University. This paper was presented in the symposium titled “Short-Term Memory: Where DoWe Stand?” at the the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, November 1991.
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Martin, R.C. Short-term memory and sentence processing: Evidence from neuropsychology. Mem Cogn 21, 176–183 (1993). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202730
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202730