ظرفیت حافظه کار، تخصیص استراتژیک زمان مطالعه، و یادآوری با ارزش-محور

To further elucidate the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and long-term memory (LTM), the present study investigated how individual differences in WMC relate to strategic encoding and subsequent retrieval in a self-regulated value-directed remembering paradigm. Participants were given 2 min to study lists of words that varied in explicit value and then were asked to freely recall the words they had just studied. In Experiment 1, participants were not given any guidance on effective encoding strategies. The strategy that led to the highest point totals was to ignore the low-value items altogether, and high-WMC participants were more likely to use this strategy. In Experiment 2, half of participants received an instruction on how to best allocate their study time at the beginning of the task, and half received this instruction after three of the six lists. Equating participants on the use of an effective strategy from the beginning of the task eliminated WMC-related differences in task performance. Together the results support the conclusion that low-WMC individuals spontaneously use effective encoding strategies less often than high-WMC individuals. But when instructed to do so, WMC-related differences are greatly attenuated. Therefore, one of the major reasons for the WMC-LTM relationship seems to be the differential development and execution of task-appropriate strategies during encoding of to-be-remembered information.