Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper investigates working memory failure in menu driven Phone-Based Interaction (PBT). W e have used a computational model of Phone-Based Interaction (PBI USER ) to generate predictions about the impact of three factors on W M failure: PBI features (i.e., m e n u structure), individual differences (i.e., W M capacity) and task characteristics (i.e., task format and number of tasks). Our computational model is based on the theory of W M proposed by Just and Carpenter (1992). This theory stipulates that the storage and the processing of information generate demands for W M resources. Our empirical results provide strong evidence for the importance of storage demands, and moderate evidence for the importance of processing demands as predictors of W M failure in PBI. In addition, our results provide evidence for the importance of individual differences in W M capacity as a predictor of W M failure in PBI. Finally, our results indicate that, contrary to general guidelines for the design of PBI, deep menu hierarchies (no more than three options per menu ) do not reduce WM error ratesin PBI.