Working memory and cognitive complexity of writing tasks in Spanish as a foreign language

Abstract

espanolEl objetivo del presente estudio fue examinar la incidencia de la memoria operativa en la produccion escrita de 65 aprendientes griegos de espanol como lengua extranjera. Los informantes realizaron dos tareas, la primera bajo presion de tiempo y la segunda bajo condiciones relativamente mas favorables de actuacion, y sus textos se evaluaron mediante una escala de evaluacion analitica. La capacidad de la memoria operativa se midio a traves de las pruebas Speaking Span Task y Math Span Task. Asimismo, se utilizo una prueba de repeticion de pseudopalabras para evaluar su capacidad de la memoria fonologica. Los resultados mostraron que la memoria operativa predijo de manera significativa la calidad del discurso escrito, siendo su contribucion ligeramente mayor en la tarea de mayor complejidad cognitiva. Por otro lado, la memoria fonologica tuvo una influencia positiva en la actuacion, aunque solo en la realizacion de la tarea de menor complejidad cognitiva. EnglishThe purpose of this study was to investigate the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in foreign language (FL) written production. Sixty-five Greek learners of Spanish as a FL performed two written tasks, the first one under time pressure and the second one under relatively easier task conditions (i.e. more time-on-task), and their linguistic performance was assessed by an analytical assessment scale. WMC was measured by means of three tasks, i.e. the Speaking Span Task, the Math Span Task and a non-word repetition task, which was designed in order to measure the phonological short-term memory capacity. The results showed that WMC made a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of text quality in both tasks, which was slightly higher in the performance of the more complex task, while phonological short-term memory capacity had a positive influence only on the performance of the less demanding task