Colom Roberto, Rebollo Irene, Abad Francisco J, Shih Pei Chun
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Mem Cognit. 2006 Jan;34(1):158-71. doi: 10.3758/bf03193395.
There is great interest in the relationships between memory span tasks and cognitive abilities. However, the causes underlying their correlation remain unknown. In the present article, five key data sets were reanalyzed according to two criteria: They must consider complex span tasks (so-called working memory [WM] tasks) and simple span tasks (so-called short-term memory [STM] tasks), and they must comprise cognitive ability measures. The obtained results offer several points of interest. First, memory span tasks should be conceived from a hierarchical perspective: They comprise both general and specific components. Second, the general component explains about four times the variance explained by the specific components. Third, STM and WM measures are closely related. Fourth, STM and WM measures share the same common variance with cognitive abilities. Finally, the strong relationship usually found between memory span tasks and cognitive abilities could be tentatively interpreted by the component shared by STM and WM--namely, the capacity for temporarily preserving a reliable memory representation of any given information.
人们对记忆广度任务与认知能力之间的关系极为关注。然而，它们之间相关性的潜在原因仍然未知。在本文中，根据两个标准对五个关键数据集进行了重新分析：它们必须考虑复杂广度任务（所谓的工作记忆[WM]任务）和简单广度任务（所谓的短期记忆[STM]任务），并且必须包含认知能力测量。所得结果提供了几个有趣的点。首先，记忆广度任务应从层次角度来理解：它们包括一般成分和特定成分。其次，一般成分所解释的方差约为特定成分所解释方差的四倍。第三，STM和WM测量密切相关。第四，STM和WM测量与认知能力共享相同的共同方差。最后，记忆广度任务与认知能力之间通常发现的强关系可以初步由STM和WM共享的成分来解释——即暂时保存任何给定信息的可靠记忆表征的能力。
