Nelson Cowan: backward speakers
Some 20 years ago Nelson Cowan published a series of papers on fluent backward speakers. His recent work on verbal short-term memory and its development is also relevant.
Nelson Cowan
Curators’ ProfessorUniversity of Missouri-Columbia
Department of Psychological Sciences
210 McAlester Hall
Columbia, MO 65211-2500University of Missouri-Columbia
Department of Psychological SciencesPh.D. , 1980
University of WisconsinResearch Specializations
- Short-term or working memory
- Childhood development of short-term or working memory
- Relations between working memory and selective attention in information processing
Cowan Lab: Working-Memory Laboratory
Recent Honor: Honorary Doctorate from the University of Helsinki
Research Interests
My research always has been driven by basic philosophical questions about the human mind, concerned with the most basic elements of conscious experience. What mechanisms allow human beings to experience the world as they do? Experiments on memory, attention, perception, and cognitive development address this question.
Current research focus: selective attention and working memory. "Working memory" (or short-term memory) can be defined as the small amount of information that can be kept in an accessible state in order to be used in ongoing mental tasks. For example, to comprehend ongoing language, one must hold in mind what has been said so far. In a 1988 article in Psychological Bulletin I put forward my view that what has been called working memory actually refers to two processes, a source of some confusion. Working memory refers to the automatic, temporary persistence of sensory and semantic information recently activated in the brain, and also to the inclusion of a subset of the activated information in the focus of attention. Donald Broadbent, a pioneer in the field, asked me to write a book expanding this view (1995, Oxford University Press, Attention and memory: An integrated framework). In addition to discussing memory, I offered hypotheses of how information enters the focus of attention, and of the relation between memory activation and attention.
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Publications (on backward talking and verbal working memory)
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L. A. (1981). Juggling acts with linguistic units. In M. F. Miller, C. S. Masek, & R. A. Hendrick (Eds.), Proceedings from the parasession on language and behavior. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L. A. (1982). Talking backward: Exceptional speech play in late childhood. Journal of Child Language, 9, 481-495.
Cowan, N., Leavitt, L. A., Massaro, D. W., & Kent, R. D. (1982). A fluent backward talker. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 25, 48-53. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L. A. (1983). Talking backward: Speech play in late childhood. In C. L. Thew & E. L. Johnson (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress for the Study of Child Language (Vol. 2). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Cowan, N., Braine, M. D. S., & Leavitt, L. A. (1985). The phonological and metaphonological representation of speech: Evidence from fluent backward talkers. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 679-698.
Cowan, N., Braine, M. D. S., & Leavitt, L. A. (1986). Identifying phonemes and syllables: Evidence from people who rapidly reorder speech. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 9, 1-39.
Cowan, N., & Kielbasa, L. (1986). Temporal properties of memory for speech in preschool children. Memory & Cognition, 14, 382-390.
Cowan, N., Lichty, W., & Grove, T. (1988). Memory for unattended speech during silent reading. In M. M. Gruneberg, P. E. Morris, & R. N. Sykes (Eds.), Practical aspects of memory: Current research and issues (Vol. 2). NY: Wiley & Sons.
Cowan, N., Cartwright, C., Winterowd, C., & Sherk, M. (1987). An adult model of preschool children’s speech memory. Memory and Cognition, 15, 511-517.
Cowan, N., & Barron, A. (1987). Cross-modal, auditory-visual Stroop interference and possible implications for speech memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 393-401.
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L. A. (1987). The developmental course of two children who could talk backward five years ago. Journal of Child Language, 14, 393-395.
Cowan, N. (1987). Auditory sensory storage in relation to the growth of sensation and acoustic information extraction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 204-215. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N. (1987). Auditory memory: Procedures to examine two phases. In W. A. Yost & C. S. Watson (Eds.), Auditory processing of complex sounds. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cowan, N. (1989). Acquisition of Pig Latin: A Case Study. Journal of Child Language, 16, 365-386. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N., Lichty, W., & Grove, T.R. (1990). Properties of memory for unattended spoken syllables. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 258-269. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N. (1991). Recurrent speech patterns as cues to the segmentation of multisyllabic sequences. Acta Psychologica, 77, 121-135. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N., Saults, J.S., Winterowd, C., & Sherk, M. (1991). Enhancement of 4-year-old children’s memory span for phonologically similar and dissimilar word lists. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 51, 30-52. [ abstract ]
Balota, D.A., Cowan, N., & Engle, R.W. (1990). Suffix interference in the recall of linguistically coherent speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 446-456. [ abstract ]
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L.A. (1992). Speakers’ access to the phonological structure of the syllable in word games. In M. Ziolkowski, M. Noske, & K. Deaton (eds.), Papers from the 26th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Volume 2: The Parasession On the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Cowan, N. (1992). Verbal memory span and the timing of spoken recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 668-684.
Cowan, N., Day, L., Saults, J.S., Keller, T.A., Johnson, T., & Flores, L. (1992). The role of verbal output time in the effects of word length on immediate memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 1-17.
Cowan, N., Keller, T., Hulme, C., Roodenrys, S., McDougall, S., & Rack, J. (1994). Verbal memory span in children: Speech timing clues to the mechanisms underlying age and word length effects. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 234-250.
Cowan, N. (1994). Mechanisms of verbal short-term memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3, 185-189
Gillam, R.B., Cowan, N., & Day, L.S. (1995). Sequential memory in children with and without language impairment. Journal of Speech & Hearing Research, 38, 393-402. [ abstract ]
Multhaup, K.S., Balota, D.A., & Cowan, N. (1996). Implications of aging, lexicality, and item length for the mechanisms underlying memory span. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 112-120.
Cowan, N. (1997). The development of working memory. In N. Cowan (ed.), The development of memory in childhood. Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Cowan, N., Wood, N.L., Nugent, L.D., & Treisman, M. (1997). There are two word length effects in verbal short-term memory: Opposed effects of duration and complexity. Psychological Science, 8, 290-295.
Gillam, R., Cowan, N., & Marler, J. (1998). Information processing by school-age children with specific language impairment: Evidence from a modality effect paradigm. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 41, 913-926. [ abstract ]
Saults, J.S., & Cowan, N. (1998) . Developmental and individual differences in short-term memory. In N. Raz (ed.), The other side of the error term: Aging and development as model systems in cognitive neuroscience. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (pp. 155-196).
Cowan, N. (1998). Evidence against the global speed of processing theory of working memory. In M.A. Gernsbacher & S.J. Derry (Eds.), Proceedings of the twentieth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (p. 1211)
Cowan, N., Saults, J.S., Nugent, L.D., & Elliott, E.M. (1999). The microanalysis of memory span and its development in childhood. International Journal of Psychology, 34, 353-358. (Special Quebec Memory Conference issue)
Towse, J., & Cowan, N. (2005). Working memory and its relevance for cognitive development. In W. Schneider, R. Schumann-Hengsteler, & B. Sodian (eds.), Young children’s cognitive development: Interrelationships among executive functioning, working memory, verbal ability, and theory of mind. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (pp. 9-37)
Cowan, N., Saults, J.S., & Brown, G.D.A. (2004). On the auditory modality superiority effect in serial recall: Separating input and output factors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 639-644.
Cowan, N., Elliott, E.M., Saults, J.S., Nugent, L.D., Bomb, P., & Hismjatullina, A. (in press). Rethinking speed theories of cognitive development: Increasing the rate of recall without affecting accuracy. Psychological Science.