Current Directions in Psych Science October 2018

'''Jones, D. M., & Macken, B. (2018). In the beginning was the deed: Verbal short-term memory as object-oriented action. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 351-356.'''

In a new take on verbal short-term memory (vSTM), Jones and Macken (2018) present a framework for vSTM as not a separate system but rather the same system as STM for objects that is goal-oriented. The authors provide several points to argue in favor of this suggestion, focusing on evidence from effects on STM from modality, presentation, re-presentation, complexity, stimulus similarity, and irrelevant information. In sum, it is posited that accounts of vSTM have been weighed down by the assumption that human minds mirror those of machines and is suggested that researchers in the field instead work to understand these processes as an organic, animalistic phenomena.