Separating cognitive capacity from knowledge: a new hypothesis

Abstract

We propose that working memory (WM) and reasoning share related capacity limits. These limits are quantified in terms of the number of items that can be kept active in WM, and the number of interrelationships between elements that can be kept active in reasoning. The latter defines the complexity of reasoning problems and the processing loads they impose. Principled procedures for measuring, controlling or limiting recoding and other strategies for reducing memory and processing loads have opened up new research opportunities, and yielded orderly quantification of capacity limits in both memory and reasoning. We argue that both types of limit may be based on the limited ability to form and preserve bindings between elements in memory.The techniques that humans have for making the best use of available information processing capacity are of immense value, but they have to be controlled in order to study capacity limitations and effects of complexity. New, principled procedures for measuring, controlling or limiting recoding and other strategies whereby subjects reduce memory and processing loads have enabled complexity and capacity effects to be investigated independently of, and in interaction with, knowledge. In this paper we present an hypothesis that this development enables a new, integrated treatment of reasoning and working memory (WM), including an orderly quantification of capacity limits, and that this has opened up new research opportunities. Working memory and reasoningDevelopments in both theory and methodology have strengthened the links between WM and reasoning and some salient points are summarised in Box 1. We propose that the essential link between WM and reasoning is in the common requirement to bind elements to a coordinate system. Consider first short-term serial recall of the words, "Fido, Rover, Cleo". The words are assigned to ordinal positions when presented ( Figure 1A), but this assignment must be maintained for later recall, and this requires attention. Even in free recall (not shown), items on a trial must be bound to the present-trial concept or node in memory; binding may be even more extensive inasmuch as an associative network between items would greatly aid in recall. Now consider a choice reaction time task where participants press a different button in response

Constructivist developmental theory is needed in developmental neuroscience

“…8 These results would benefit from a developmental framework that explains the global and less differentiated performance in younger children in terms of processing limits in mental/executive attentional capacity in younger children. 2,[9][10][11][12][13][14] Overall, brain responses are affected by chronological age and performance scores, although the relation often is not semantically specified.…”

“…69,70 Other neo-Piagetians-this is the Maturational Attention group of theories, agree with the importance of constructivist-learning processes but think that this sort of learning (in contrast to associative learning) is only possible by maturational growth of a limited resource: mental/executive attention. 11,13,26,36,[71][72][73] Maturational attention is a key determinant of working memory. For this latter group of theories, mental-attentional mechanisms grow in power as a function of age in normal children, which (along with other causes) co-determine emergence of developmental stages.…”

“…Halford et al 66,71,83 have also focused on how to assess the effort/load of mental/executive attention. They attempt this appraisal by estimating effective complexity in terms of the number of inter-related terms that must be jointly considered in the task at hand-relational complexity.…”

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory

“…This capacity constraint can be expressed either by the number of items that can be held in working memory or by the number of interrelationships among elements in a reasoning task. The reason for a common capacity limitation is assumed to lie in the common demand for attention when temporary binding processes are taking place to form representations in reasoning tasks (22). Other authors came to a related conclusion, stating that Gf and working memory are primarily related through attentional control processes (23,24).…”

Models as Relational Categories

“…The relational complexity theory assesses the relational complexity of representations as the number of entities that are related, and maintains that our working memory capacity limits our processing to a quartenary relation in parallel (Halford et al 2007;Halford et al 2010). More complex structures can be handled by processing them sequentially or by chunking (which renders some of the relations inaccessible).…”