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6 - Long-Term Working Memory and Language Comprehension

from Part II - Models and Measures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

By
R. Lane Adams  and
Peter F. Delaney
Edited by
John W. Schwieter  and
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen
John W. Schwieter
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Shue Yan University
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Summary

Working memory’s limited capacity places significant constraints on people's ability to hold information while processing. However, skilled readers are able to effectively encode important information into long-term memory during comprehension. This chapter describes the long-term working memory theory (LT-WM), originally developed to explain how experts in various domains (including reading) enhance their working memory capacity by relying on rapid, skilled use of long-term memory. We first trace the development of the theory and the reasons it took the form it did in the mid-1990s. We explain that LT-WM was not viewed as a new form of memory, but rather as highly practiced use of long-term memory to rapidly and reliably link information together using meaningful associations, retrieval structures, and preexisting knowledge. Next, we describe how the theory accounted for many central phenomena in discourse comprehension. More recent work has proposed a form of LT-WM for syntactic processing as well, and we discuss current critiques of the original evidence advanced to support LT-WM. Finally, we describe recent studies on neural activity associated with LT-WM development in reasoning skills and language comprehension.

Keywords

long-term working memorycomprehensionskilled memoryreading comprehension
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language , pp. 98 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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