Working Memory Capacity

2016-04-14

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Author: Nelson Cowan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317232380
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 238

The idea of one's memory "filling up" is a humorous misconception of how memory in general is thought to work; it actually has no capacity limit. However, the idea of a "full brain" makes more sense with reference to working memory, which is the limited amount of information a person can hold temporarily in an especially accessible form for use in the completion of almost any challenging cognitive task. This groundbreaking book explains the evidence supporting Cowan's theoretical proposal about working memory capacity, and compares it to competing perspectives. Cognitive psychologists profoundly disagree on how working memory is limited: whether by the number of units that can be retained (and, if so, what kind of units and how many), the types of interfering material, the time that has elapsed, some combination of these mechanisms, or none of them. The book assesses these hypotheses and examines explanations of why capacity limits occur, including vivid biological, cognitive, and evolutionary accounts. The book concludes with a discussion of the practical importance of capacity limits in daily life. This 10th anniversary Classic Edition will continue to be accessible to a wide range of readers and serve as an invaluable reference for all memory researchers.

Working Memory Capacity

2012-06-12

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Author: Nelson Cowan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135432066
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 235

This book tackles the problem of working memory capacity limits and the future of research on this topic. This book will be invaluable to working memory researchers and cognitive psychologists interested in memory.

Working Memory Capacity

2012-06-12

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Author: Nelson Cowan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135432058
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 442

The idea of one's memory "filling up" is a humorous misconception of how memory in general is thought to work; it is actually has no capacity limit. However, the idea of a "full brain" makes more sense with reference to working memory, which is the limited amount of information a person can hold temporarily in an especially accessible form for use in the completion of almost any challenging cognitive task. This groundbreaking book explains the evidence supporting Cowan's theoretical proposal about working memory capacity, and compares it to competing perspectives. Cognitive psychologists profoundly disagree on how working memory is limited: whether by the number of units that can be retained (and, if so, what kind of units and how many?), the types of interfering material, the time that has elapsed, some combination of these mechanisms, or none of them. The book assesses these hypotheses and examines explanations of why capacity limits occur, including vivid biological, cognitive, and evolutionary accounts. The book concludes with a discussion of the practical importance of capacity limits in daily life. Incorporating the latest from the recent surge in research into working memory capacity limits and the remarkable new insights provided by neuroimaging techniques, this book serves as an invaluable resource for all memory researchers and is accessible to a wide range of readers.

The Nature of Remembering

2001-01-01

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Author: Robert G. Crowder
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN: 9781557987501
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Annotation This proceedings of the conference held in June 1999 at Yale U. is also a festschrift to Crowder (d. 2000), who taught at the same institution and whose life and career are the subject of the initial chapter. Subsequent chapters consider topics that include: episodic memory, the issues raised concerning the semantic activation from reading, implicit phenomena of cognition and its reception by social psychologists, the serial position curve and the effects of mode of presentation, touch as a modality of information, the effects of irrelevant speech and sounds on memory, and the Ranschburg effect. The concluding four chapters are devoted to issues of short-term memory. All of the contributors teach psychology at universities in the US and Canada. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Variation in Working Memory

2008-02-13

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Author: Andrew Conway
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019972167X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Working memory--the ability to keep important information in mind while comprehending, thinking, and acting--varies considerably from person to person and changes dramatically during each person's life. Understanding such individual and developmental differences is crucial because working memory is a major contributor to general intellectual functioning. This volume offers a state-of-the-art, integrative, and comprehensive approach to understanding variation in working memory by presenting explicit, detailed comparisons of the leading theories. It incorporates views from the different research groups that operate on each side of the Atlantic, and covers working-memory research on a wide variety of populations, including healthy adults, children with and without learning difficulties, older adults, and adults and children with neurological disorders. A particular strength of this volume is that each research group explicitly addresses the same set of theoretical questions, from the perspective of both their own theoretical and experimental work and from the perspective of relevant alternative approaches. Through these questions, each research group considers their overarching theory of working memory, specifies the critical sources of working memory variation according to their theory, reflects on the compatibility of their approach with other approaches, and assesses their contribution to general working memory theory. This shared focus across chapters unifies the volume and highlights the similarities and differences among the various theories. Each chapter includes both a summary of research positions and a detailed discussion of each position. Variation in Working Memory achieves coherence across its chapters, while presenting the entire range of current theoretical and experimental approaches to variation in working memory.

The Development of Memory in Infancy and Childhood

2008-09-08

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Author: Mary L. Courage
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135419817
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 423

Human memory is not only the repository of our past but the essence of who we are. As such, it is of enduring fascination. We marvel at its resilience in some situations and its fragility in others. The origin of this extraordinary cognitive capacity in infancy and childhood is the focus of vigorous research and debate as we seek to understand the record of our earliest beginnings. The first edition of this volume, The Development of Memory in Childhood, documented the state-of-the-art science of memory development a decade ago. This new edition, The Development of Memory in Infancy and Childhood, provides a thorough update and expansion of the previous text and offers reviews of new research on significant themes and ideas that have emerged since then. Topics include basic memory processes in infants and toddlers, the cognitive neuroscience of memory development, the cognitive and social factors that underlie our memory for implicit and explicit events, autobiographical memory and infantile amnesia, working memory, the role of strategies and knowledge in driving memory development, and the impact of stress and emotion on these basic processes. The book also includes applications of basic memory processes to a variety of real world settings from the courtroom to the classroom. Including contributions from many of the best researchers in the field, this classic yet contemporary volume will appeal to senior undergraduate and graduate students of developmental and cognitive psychology as well as to developmental psychologists who want a compendium of current reviews on key topics in memory development.

The Learning Brain

2013

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Author: Torkel Klingberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199917108
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Despite all our highly publicized efforts to improve our schools, the United States is still falling behind. We recently ranked 15th in the world in reading, math, and science. Clearly, more needs to be done. In The Learning Brain, Torkel Klingberg urges us to use the insights of neuroscience to improve the education of our children. The key to improving education lies in understanding how the brain works: that is where learning takes place, after all. The book focuses in particular on working memory--our ability to concentrate and to keep relevant information in our head while ignoring distractions (a topic the author covered in The Overflowing Brain). Research shows enormous variation in working memory among children, with some ten-year-olds performing at the level of a fourteen-year old, others at that of a six-year old. More important, children with high working memory have better math and reading skills, while children with poor working memory consistently underperform. Interestingly, teachers tend to perceive children with poor working memory as dreamy or unfocused, not recognizing that these children have a memory problem. But what can we do for these children? For one, we can train working memory. The Learning Brain provides a variety of different techniques and scientific insights that may just teach us how to improve our children's working memory. Klingberg also discusses how stress can impair working memory (skydivers tested just before a jump showed a 30% drop in working memory) and how aerobic exercise can actually modify the brain's nerve cells and improve classroom performance. Torkel Klingberg is one of the world's leading cognitive neuroscientists, but in this book he wears his erudition lightly, writing with simplicity and good humor as he shows us how to give our children the best chance to learn and grow.

Visual Memory

2008-09-10

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Author: Steven J. Luck
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195305485
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Vision and memory are two of the most intensively studied topics in psychology and neuroscience. This book provides a state-of-the-art account of visual memory systems. Each chapter is written by an internationally renowned researcher, who has made seminal contributions to the topic.

Human Abilities

2013-05-13

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Author: Ian Dennis
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134791143
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 206

This volume brings together many of the leading researchers on human intelligence and cognition to address issues including definition, measurement, and instructional design. Its publication is a result of the Inaugural Spearman Seminar recently held at the University of Plymouth -- a seminar that is slated to become a regularly scheduled event providing a major international forum for the presentation of work on human abilities. To properly inaugurate this series, scientific experts in this field were asked to reflect on various issues raised but not resolved in Charles Spearman's classic work, The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement, published in 1927. As a result of this approach, the book offers a unique overview of the way in which the study of human abilities has developed since 1927, and of current positions in the field. It offers exhaustive discussions on: * the nature of cognitive abilities and intelligence -- a review of how the factor analytic approach to abilities which grew out of Spearman's work has developed, thoughts regarding the contribution of a cross-cultural perspective, and an elucidation of some of the conceptual issues which often cloud discussions of ability; * different aspects of the contribution of cognitive psychology to our understanding of abilities -- the relationship between Spearman's g and working memory, links between attention and cognitive style, and the area of spatial abilities; * recent developments in latent variable and item response modeling; and * applied issues -- the argument that little predictive value can be gained in occupational selection from measuring abilities other than Spearman's g, and the question of aptitude treatment interactions in education.

Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition

2010-06-16

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Author: Aleksandra Gruszka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781441912107
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 494

As cognitive models of behavior continue to evolve, the mechanics of cognitive exceptionality, with its range of individual variations in abilities and performance, remains a challenge to psychology. Reaching beyond the standard view of exceptional cognition equaling superior intelligence, the Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition examines the latest findings from psychobiology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, for a comprehensive state-of-the-art volume. Breaking down cognition in terms of attentional mechanisms, working memory, and higher-order processing, contributors discuss general models of cognition and personality. Chapter authors build on this foundation as they revisit current theory in such areas as processing effort and general arousal and examine emerging methods in individual differences research, including new data on the role of brain plasticity in cognitive function. The possibility of a unified theory of individual differences in cognitive ability and the extent to which these variables may account for real-world competencies are emphasized, and commentary chapters offer suggestions for further research priorities. Coverage highlights include: The relationship between cognition and temperamental traits. The development of autobiographical memory. Anxiety and attentional control. The neurophysiology of gender differences in cognitive ability. Intelligence and cognitive control. Individual differences in dual task coordination. The effects of subclinical depression on attention, memory, and reasoning. Mood as a shaper of information. Researchers, clinicians, and graduate students in psychology and cognitive sciences, including clinical psychology and neuropsychology, personality and social psychology, neuroscience, and education, will find the Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition an expert guide to the field as it currently stands and to its agenda for the future.