baddely

• aim:

  To investigate if participants can use different parts of working memory at the same time.
• method:

  Conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to perform two tasks at the same time (dual task technique) – a digit span task which required them to repeat a list of numbers, and a verbal reasoning task which required them to answer true or false to various questions
• results:

  As the number of digits increased in the digit span tasks, participants took longer to answer the reasoning questions, but not much longer, only fractions of a second.  And, they didn't make any more errors in the verbal reasoning tasks as the number of digits increased.
• conclusion:

  The verbal reasoning task made use of the central executive and the digit span task made use of the phonological loop.