ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

中国科学院心理研究所

›› 2008, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (01): 25-36.

### The Impact of Attentional Control and Short-term Storage on Phonemic and Semantic Fluency

LU Aai-Tao;ZHANG Ji-Jia;MO Lei

1. Department of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China
• Received:2006-10-13 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2008-01-30 Published:2008-01-30
• Contact: ZHANG Ji-Jia

Abstract: Recently, Rende explored the role of set shifting in verbal fluency, which is a subfunction of the central executive system. However, the central executive system contains more than one subfunction, including inhibition. During the verbal fluency tasks, participants were required to produce words in a certain time period (one minute); further, they were not permitted to repeat the words that they had just produced. Thus, it is reasonable that verbal fluency might employ the inhibition function. One of the aims of the present study is to explore the impact of short-term storage resource and attentional resource on verbal fluency. This was based on Engle’s model, which proposed that working memory was equal to short-term storage plus attention controlling.
Exp. 1 used set calculation and mouse operation (pasting a sentence in Microsoft Word) as the secondary tasks to explore the impact of the central executive system (shifting and inhibition) on verbal fluency. Forty undergraduates (20 women and 20 men) participated in this experiment. Of the total participants, half of them (10 women and 10 men) participated in set calculation task, while the other half joined in the mouse operation task. The oral speed of all participants was estimated. Subsequently, the participants were given a familiar topic, such as “my college life,” and were required to talk on the subject for one minute. Moreover, they were required to assess their Chinese language level based on a 5-point scale. The scores of all participants were equal to or higher than 3. Those who had participated in the mouse operation secondary task were required to estimate their computer operation level. All of them had spent more than 2 hours per day on a computer and were familiar with mouse operation. We employed a two-factor within-subject design, 2 (phonemic and semantic fluency) × 2 (single- and dual- task conditions), for this experiment.
Exp. 2 employed (1) equation judgment (demanding both storage and attentional resources), (2) odd/even judgment (demanding attentional resource but not storage resource), and (3) pressing keys randomly (demanding neither storage nor attentional resources) as secondary tasks to investigate the role of two different kinds of resources in verbal fluency. Another sixty subjects (30 women and 30 men) participated in Exp 2. The subject selection procedure was the same as that used in Exp.1, with the exception of computer assessment. Similar to Exp. 1, we employed a two-factor mixed design, 2 (phonemic and semantic fluency) × 3 (three different kinds of secondary tasks) in this experiment. The fluency tasks were a within-subject design, while the secondary tasks were a between-subject design.