Declarative and Procedural Working Memory: Common Principles, Common Capacity Limits?

Abstract

Working memory is often described as a system for simultaneous storage and processing. Much research -and most measures of working-memory capacity -focus on the storage component only, that is, people's ability to recall or recognize items after short retention intervals. The mechanisms of processing information are studied in a separate research tradition, concerned with the selection and control of actions in simple choice situations, dual-task constellations, or task-switching setups. both research traditions investigate performance based on representations that are temporarily maintained in an active, highly accessible state, and constrained by capacity limits. In this article an integrated theoretical framework of declarative and procedural working memory is presented that relates the two domains of research to each other. Declarative working memory is proposed to hold representations available for processing (including recall and recognition), whereas procedural working memory holds representations that control processing (i.e., task sets, stimulus-response mappings, and executive control settings). The framework motivates two hypotheses: Declarative and procedural working memory have separate capacity limits, and they operate by analogous principles. The framework also suggests a new characterization of executive functions as the subset of processes governed by procedural working memory that has as its output a change in the conditions of operation of the working-memory system. Throughout his career, andre Vandierendonck has worked on a better understanding of the limits of human cognitive capacity. among other things, he has a long-standing interest in the operating principles of working memory and of executive functions. both concepts play an important role in determining the success of our cognitive endeavours. The concept of working memory derives from the older concept of a short-term memory store, and due to this heritage, working memory is often described as a system for the shortterm storage and processing of information. both the storage capacity and the processing capacity of working memory are thought to be limited. The limited storage capacity is most apparent when people are asked to remember new sets of items (e.g., lists of words, arrays of objects) that are briefly presented to them for immediate recall or recognition. accuracy in such tasks declines sharply as the set size of memory items increases, leading some researchers to estimate the storage capacity of working memory to about four items (Luck & Vogel, 1997;Cowan, 2001). The processing capacity of working memory is more difficult to grasp, and has therefore attracted less systematic research. Inspired by the work of baddeley (1986), the processing

Does working memory training have to be adaptive?

“…Second, trivia quiz questions could evoke reasoning strategies (e.g., rejection of implausible answers) that would require -and hence, practice -relational integration processes; that is, the coordination of information elements into structures. Recent theories consider relational integration as crucial part of WM (e.g., Oberauer, 2010;Oberauer, Süß, Wilhelm, & Wittmann, 2003), and research has shown that such processes are highly related to fluid intelligence (e.g., Oberauer, Süß, Wilhelm, & Wittmann, 2008). We can only speculate whether such processes took place during active control training, but it could serve as an explanation for the active control group also showing some improvement in the transfer tasks.…”

Instruction-based task-rule congruency effects.

“…Working memory is often assumed to consist of active long-term memory on the one hand and a capacity-limited part such as the direct-access region on the other hand (e.g., Oberauer, 2009Oberauer, , 2010). Yet, as was already suggested in the Discussion of Experiment 2, our results may be better framed in a more elaborate working-memory architecture.…”

“…Meiran, 1996Meiran, , 2000Rogers & Monsell, 1995). When frequent task switching is imposed, two task-sets are concurrently represented in the capacity-limited portion of working memory that involves the most accessible subset of representations, to which we refer as the direct-access region (see also, Oberauer, 2009Oberauer, , 2010. Because both task-sets are simultaneously active to a certain degree and both tasks overlap, task-irrelevant responses are triggered.…”

When Affect Supports Cognitive Control – A Working Memory Perspective

“…These are known as executive functions (EF), and their exact number has not been agreed on (Smith & Kosslyn, 2009). Reviews by various authors (e.g., Miyake et al, 2000;Oberauer, 2010;Nęcka et al, 2012;Cohen, Aston-Jones & Gilzenrat, 2004) demonstrate that executive function can be understood either as a control mechanism, for instance, detecting and monitoring conflicts (e.g., Cohen et al, 2004), or as processes which directly change the processing of information, such as inhibition (a consequence of response to conflict). The latter approach is adopted by Oberauer (2010), for whom EFs signify "the collection of cognitive functions or processes that serve to control the primary processes directed at solving a task" (p. 298).…”

“…Short-term information storage and its simultaneous handling (attributed to purposive activity) also characterize working memory (WM) in the classical Baddeley & Hitch model (1974). However, Oberauer (2010) observed that researchers tend to focus only on one of the aspects of WM -either on the storage component, i.e., people's ability to recall or recognize items after short retention intervals (mostly in WM capacity studies), or on the information processing component ("selection and control of actions in simple choice situations, dual-task constellations, or taskswitching setups; " Oberauer, 2010, p. 277). This may be an effect of how short-term memory (STM), which is free from the procedural aspect, has traditionally been studied.…”