Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The current study examined the effects of workingmemory training on working memory capacity andsecond language ability in adult learners ofSpanish. In order to maximize the effect of the trainingfor language learners, the stimuli for the training taskswere Spanish words and sentences. While the traininggroup did not show greater improvements on workingmemory assessments relative to controls, they did showmore native-like patterns in a Spanish self-paced readingtask. The combination of second language materials withworking memory training may be helping users learn tocope with the increased processing demands associatedwith learning a new language, even if they are notnecessarily improving their working memory.