Stress, expressive writing, and working memory.

Author(s):  
Kitty Klein
2021 ◽  
pp. 008124632110434
Author(s):  
Jonita Swart ◽  
Chris Janeke

This study investigated the influence of expressive writing on the working memory capacity of middle adolescents (learners 15–17 years old) and young adults (students 18–24 years old) in the South African context. The assumption underlying the research was that expressive writing about a stressful event would reduce unwanted thoughts and the resultant demand on cognitive resources, thereby increasing working memory capacity. Two experiments were conducted involving a sample of 28 school learners and a sample of 38 university students. In each experiment, the participants were assigned to three writing conditions: a factual event for the control group and either just a stressful event, or a solution to a stressful event, for the two experimental groups. It was postulated that the solution-focused group would gain the most from the expressive writing tasks. Working memory capacity assessments were conducted before and after the expressive writing intervention and again about 14 weeks later to test for a long-term effect on working memory capacity. A positive effect was found regarding the working memory capacity of the students, but there was no statistically significant improvement in the working memory capacity of the learners. Furthermore, although the results of the student groups did indicate that an expressive writing intervention may enhance working memory capacity, this effect was not mostly restricted to the solution-focused experimental groups as was hypothesised. Instead, the results suggested that expressive writing exercises may have had a positive effect on the memory performance of all three groups.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (vol. 11 issue 3) ◽  
pp. 505-523
Author(s):  
Michael Fartoukh ◽  
Lucile Chanquoy

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca De Vita ◽  
Susanna Schmidt ◽  
Carla Tinti ◽  
Anna Maria Re

Literature has extensively demonstrated the coordination role of working memory (WM) in complex tasks such as writing. However, previous studies mostly concentrated on the relation between passive WM (e.g., WM span) components and specific writing tasks (e.g., dictation). Here, we aimed to investigate the relationship between different writing skills and the performance on a WM updating task measuring the more active components of WM. From a pool of 160 Italian pupils (grades 3–5), we selected 46 children divided in two groups based on their WM updating performance. The first group consisted of 21 children with low WM updating performance (≤10th percentile), the second group consisted of 25 children with high WM updating performance (≥90th percentile). All children were tested on a battery of writing tasks to assess writing speed, orthographic skills, and competences in expressive writing. MANOVAs and a discriminant analysis were computed to assess group differences and the contribution of the different writing tests in correctly predicting group membership. The results revealed that children with high WM updating performance scored significantly higher than children with low WM updating performance on most of the writing tasks. These results highlight the relevant role of the active components of WM on writing processes. In addition, they suggest that the improvement of writing skills should rely not only on the training of the specific processes implied in this complex task, but also on the training of the cognitive processes that support them, such as active WM processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (vol. 11 issue 3) ◽  
pp. 505-523
Author(s):  
Michael Fartoukh ◽  
Lucile Chanquoy

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-146
Author(s):  
Yoshihide Noritake ◽  
Yuko Takei ◽  
Masaharu Terasaki ◽  
Masako Kadota ◽  
Itsuko Takeuchi ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Potter

AbstractRapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words or pictured scenes provides evidence for a large-capacity conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that momentarily provides rich associated material from long-term memory, permitting rapid chunking (Potter 1993; 2009; 2012). In perception of scenes as well as language comprehension, we make use of knowledge that briefly exceeds the supposed limits of working memory.


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