Information Processing    Read: Miller: Chapter 7  See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27

A Processing Approach to the Working Memory/Long-Term Memory
Distinction: Evidence From the Levels-of-Processing Span Task

Nathan S. Rose and Fergus I. M. Craik
Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Recent theories suggest that performance on working memory (WM) tasks involves retrieval from
long-term memory (LTM). To examine whether WM and LTM tests have common principles, Craik and
Tulving’s (1975) levels-of-processing paradigm, which is known to affect LTM, was administered as a
WM task: Participants made uppercase, rhyme, or category-membership judgments about words, and
immediate recall of the words was required after every 3 or 8 processing judgments. In Experiment 1,
immediate recall did not demonstrate a levels-of-processing effect, but a subsequent LTM test (delayed
recognition) of the same words did show a benefit of deeper processing. Experiment 2 showed that
surprise immediate recall of 8-item lists did demonstrate a levels-of-processing effect, however. A
processing account of the conditions in which levels-of-processing effects are and are not found in WM
tasks was advanced, suggesting that the extent to which levels-of-processing effects are similar between
WM and LTM tests largely depends on the amount of disruption to active maintenance processes.

Keywords: short-term memory, working memory, long-term memory, secondary memory, depth of
processing, levels of processing

The idea that short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory
(LTM) represent distinct memory systems has a long history (see
Jonides et al., 2008, for an excellent review). Memory over the
short term and the long term has been thought to differ in many
ways in terms of capacity, the underlying neural substrates, and the
types of processes that support performance. Following the ideas
proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974), studies in the general area
of short-term retention have been increasingly framed in terms of
working memory (WM), typically involving tasks in which cog-
nitive operations are performed on small amounts of information
held briefly in mind. Although there is general agreement that
short-term retention tasks rely on STM or WM and longer term
retention tasks rely on LTM, there is less agreement on the
cognitive architecture of STM, WM, and LTM and on the relations
between these arguably distinct types of memory. The situation is
further complicated by the possibility that short-term retention
tasks may draw on information held in both short-term and long-

term memory. For example, Waugh and Norman (1965) proposed
that the recency effect in verbal free-recall reflects retrieval from
both primary memory (PM) and secondary memory (SM). Many
current researchers (e.g., Cowan, 1999; Oberauer, 2002; Unsworth
& Engle, 2007) also believe that short lists of items (e.g., four
words) can be maintained in PM (or the focus of attention; Cowan,
1999), whe