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The Effects of Age and Anxiety On The Working Memory System

            
             The following study was an experiment conducted to explore the possibility of age and anxiety having an effect on the level of reading span attained after completion of a computerised reading span task and an anxiety self report. All of the psychology level 2 students participated in this experiment. Age was put into two categories, 19-21 years, N= 97 and 22years +, N= 92. The reading span task uses the central executive system in short term memory, relating to Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory. Using a related factorial ANOVA test, the results produced a significant main effect between age and reading span, and anxiety and age. The hypothesis was excepted .
             Introduction.
             The general theoretical background of this project relates to the aspects of Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory, age and the effects of anxiety and whilst performing computerised reading span tasks.
             Baddeley's (1986) proposed a new view of the architecture of the memory system. In this model STM is replaced by three new memory components, the central executive, phonological store and the visual-spatial scratch pad (VSSP). The temporary memory used for storing information about the active goals at the moment is the component of the central executive system, expected inputs during sequences of action and intermediate products of cognitive activities e.g. language comprehension. Shulman, (1997) suggests that many of the inputs into the system are from cognitive processes rather than perceptual mechanisms. .
             Baddeley (1986) proposed that recency effects are not disrupted by a concurrent memory span task and that memory span is highly dependent on speech rate. To account for these factors the working memory includes a phonological store that is dedicated to spoken information and a sub-vocal rehearsal mechanism, the articulatory loop. Baddeley (1986), theorized that these structures are the important one's for performance of tasks like memory span or the Peterson and Peterson distracter procedure.


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