ABSTRACT
I would like to contrast that straightforward answer, with the response that you may have been deliberating upon had you addressed my question by directly considering the WM model and what it purports to explain. It is well documented that the phonological loop component of the WM model provides a reasonably detailed account of the temporary storage and processing that occurs in the immediate serial recall task (or memory span task). Therefore, if you considered that my question was requesting that you perform something akin to an immediate serial recall task, then your response may have been that the last few seconds worth of the sentence could be accurately recalled in the correct serial order. However, it is perhaps less well documented that the WM model does not play a role in the temporary storage or processing in the recency effect (the advantage of the last items in a list) in the free recall task. That is, ‘it is suggested that working memory, which in other respects can be regarded as a modified STS, does not provide the basis for recency’ (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, p. 81) or ‘working memory is supposed to have both buffer-storage and control-processing functions, with recency explained by a separate mechanism’ (p. 82). It follows that if you considered that my question required that you perform something more akin to a free recall task then the perceived wisdom would be that (perhaps rather surprisingly) none of the words in the sentence were currently in your working memory.
