Components of short-term memory and their relation to language processing - Evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging

Verbal working memory consists of separable capacities for the retention of phonological and semantic information. Within the phonological domain, there are independent capacities for retaining input-phonological codes and output-phonological codes. The input-phonological capacity does not appear to be critical for language comprehension but is involved in verbatim repetition and long-term learning of new words. The semantic capacity is critical for both comprehension and production and for the learning of new semantic information. Different neural structured appear to underlie these capacities, with a left parietal region involved in input-phonological retention and a left-frontal region involved in semantic retention.