Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cowan, Nelson

Titel

Working memory capacity

Ort / Verlag

New York, NY u.a: Psychology Pr

Erscheinungsjahr

2005

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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 competition of almost any challenging cognitive task. This ... book explains the evidence supporting the authors'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. (DIPF/Orig).