Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Two hypothesized functions of working memory –coordination (ability to maintain unrelated storage loads duringprocessing) and integration (ability to integrate multipleelements into a relation) – were explored and compared to fluidintelligence. In Experiment 1, 130 participants completed amodified Latin-Square Task (LST) which experimentallyadded or reduced storage load. Results suggested that pureintegration (with no storage load) could predict Gf, but nodifference was found between coordination and integration.Experiment 2 employed the Arithmetic Chain Task (ACT),again with modifications to storage load. Results supportreplication of LST findings, though a distinction was foundbetween coordination and integration when storage materialcould not be easily rehearsed. Findings from both experimentssupport a distinction between coordination and integrationtasks in understanding the WM-Gf association.