• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.21-28
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• 2003

This study investigated the differences in processing type of working memory between experts and novices when they read music scores. Two experiments were conducted with the articulatory suppression condition. In Experiment 1, eight half notes were shown on the screen for a brief period of time, participants were then requested to write the notes on a music sheet. the stimuli were divided into two: melodious and unmelodious. In similar fashion, Experiment 2 consisted of four-chord sequences, which contained three notes each. The stimuli were also divided into two: harmonious and disharmonious. As an analysis of the results in Experiment 1 & 2, novices commonly showed better performances in the non-articulatory suppression condition than the articulatory suppression condition with both stimuli types. However, experts were relatively affected little by the articulatory suppression with harmonious stimuli. These findings support that while novices entirely depend on the articulatory loop, experts may encode the notes through the visuo-spatial sketchpad before they transfer the information to the phonological store when they are familiar with material.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.487-515
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the individual differences in cognitive processes on paragraph comprehension. To do so, the lexical decision task and the pattern comparison task were used to measure the low-level cognitive processes. Digit span task was used to test the phonological loop capacity. The individual differences of the central executive processing capacity were measured by operational span task. Reading span task was used to test the working memory capacity related with the sentence processing. Reading times and accuracies of the logically valid inferences and logically void inferences were tested to measure the high-level cognitive processes. Reading times and accuracies for the target sentences with and without prior explicit causal sentence were measured to test individuals' paragraph comprehension abilities. The results showed that the speed of the low-level cognitive processes was related with the speed of the high-level cognitive processes. Also, the accuracy of the low-level cognitive processes was related with the accuracy of the high-level cognitive processes while there was no significant correlation between the speed and the accuracy in any measures of the cognitive processes. Working memory capacity was related with the accuracy of the cognitive processes while it was not significantly correlated with the speed of the cognitive processes. Most importantly, the speed of low-level cognitive processes significantly affected the speed of the paragraph comprehension while the working memory capacity and the high-level cognitive processes had influences on the accuracies of the paragraph comprehension. The speed of the paragraph comprehension had no influence on the accuracies of the paragraph comprehension.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.559-602
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• 2010

This study examines the concepts and functional characteristics of consciousness in comparison of memory and attention from the perspective of information processing. It also provides an understanding of the relationships between the three as hypothetical constructs. Consciousness is regarded as too ambiguous a concept to be understood and accepted as a mental construct without the inclusion of memory and attention in any conceptualization. We need one criterion to count satisfactorily as an explanation of consciousness in information processing. Consciousness would be a subjective awareness of momentary experience and also have the characteristic of an operating system performing control and consolidation in information processing. This could be called cognitive consciousness which refers to a subjective awareness and an executive control system, even though those are not equivalent concepts. Consciousness, memory and attention, three mental constructs could operate dependently or independently depending on the specific tasks conditioned in many information processing levels whose modules with three mental constructs could operate in hierarchy. In this premise, working memory could not be a unitary system, contrary to those of Baddeley and Hitch(1974) and Baddeley(1992, 2000), just being a mental workplace consisting of two components: the phonological loop, and the visual-spatial sketchpad without the episodic buffer and a central executive which are the characteristics of consciousness. In the continuum of information processing, the conscious processes and the unconscious processes seem not to be totally different and contrasting processes.