The Generality of Working Memory Capacity: A Latent-Variable Approach to Verbal and Visuospatial Memory Span and Reasoning.

Kane, Michael J.; Hambrick, David Z.; Tuholski, Stephen W.; Wilhelm, Oliver; Payne, Tabitha W.; Engle, Randall W.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.2.189

Cited by 1,402 publications

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“…As the processing period is extended, there are more chances of the item's resource share to fall below threshold, thereby being irrevocably forgotten. Kane et al, 2004). Squares show manifest variables (i.e., measured scores), and circles show latent variables (i.e., factors).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, on a lower level of generality, separate factors for verbal-numerical and for visual-spatial WM tasks can be distinguished (Alloway, Gathercole, & Pickering, 2006;Kane et al, 2004;Oberauer et al, 2000;Shah & Miyake, 1996). Figure 12 shows results from a representative study illustrating the generality and the domain-specificity of individual differences in WM capacity.…”

Section: Round C: Individual Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With these assumptions, the model was able to reproduce the factorial structure of simple and complex span tasks (C1; Kane et al, 2004).…”

Section: Factorial Structure Of Wm (C1)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

276

213

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We review the evidence for the three principal theoretical contenders that vie to explain why and how working memory capacity is limited. We examine the possibility that capacity limitations arise from temporal decay; we examine whether they might reflect a limitation in cognitive resources; and we ask whether capacity might be limited because of mutual interference of representations in working memory. We evaluate each hypothesis against a common set of findings reflecting the capacity limit: The set-size effect and its modulation by domain-specificity and heterogeneity of the memory set; the effects of unfilled retention intervals and of distractor processing in the retention interval; and the pattern of correlates of working-memory tests. We conclude that---at least for verbal memoranda---a decay explanation is untenable. A resource-based view remains tenable but has difficulty accommodating several findings. The interference approach has its own set of difficulties but accounts best for the set of findings, and therefore appears to present the most promising approach for future development.Keywords: working memory, decay, resources, interference, individual differences WM Capacity 3 What Limits Working Memory Capacity?Working memory (WM) is the system that holds mental representations available for processing. Its limited capacity is a limiting factor for the complexity of our thoughts (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007;Oberauer, 2009). Measures of WM capacity have been identified as major determinants of cognitive development in childhood (Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003) and in old age (Park et al., 2002;Salthouse, 1994), as well as of individual differences in intellectual abilities (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003;Jarrold & Towse, 2006). Understanding why WM capacity is limited is therefore an essential step toward understanding why human cognitive abilities are limited, why individuals differ in these abilities, and how abilities develop over the lifespan.In this article we use the term WM capacity in a descriptive sense, referring to the fact that people can hold only a limited amount of mental content available for processing. The capacity limit is usually operationalized as a limit on how much new information people can remember over short periods of time (in the order of seconds), but there are reasons to believe (discussed below) that the capacity limit also applies to people's ability to make information in the current environment simultaneously available for processing.Hypotheses about what limits WM capacity can be organized into three groups: (1) Some theories assume that representations in WM decay over time, unless decay is prevented by some form of restoration process such as rehearsal. According to this view, WM has limited capacity because only a limited amount of information can be rehearsed before it fades away into an irrecoverable state (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Schweickert & Boruff, 1986). (2) Alternatively, WM capacity has been characterized as a limited resourc...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Round C: Individual Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

276

213

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show abstract

“…Using this individual differences approach, the three‐factor structure has been robustly reproduced across multiple studies and age groups (Alloway, Gathercole, Willis, & Adams, 2004; Kane et al., 2004; Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003; Hornung, Brunner, Reuter, & Martin, 2011), although studies that have drawn on a wider range of assessments indicate that refinements may be needed in the concept of attentional control within the system (Gray et al., 2017). In general, these analyses have favoured the distinction between domain‐specific storage for verbal and visuo‐spatial material linked with an executive or attentional component.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in brain morphology and working memory capacity across childhood

Bathelt

Gathercole

Johnson

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

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Working memory (WM) skills are closely associated with learning progress in key areas such as reading and mathematics across childhood. As yet, however, little is known about how the brain systems underpinning WM develop over this critical developmental period. The current study investigated whether and how structural brain correlates of components of the working memory system change over development. Verbal and visuospatial short‐term and working memory were assessed in 153 children between 5.58 and 15.92 years, and latent components of the working memory system were derived. Fractional anisotropy and cortical thickness maps were derived from T1‐weighted and diffusion‐weighted MRI and processed using eigenanatomy decomposition. There was a greater involvement of the corpus callosum and posterior temporal white matter in younger children for performance associated with the executive part of the working memory system. For older children, this was more closely linked with the thickness of the occipitotemporal cortex. These findings suggest that increasing specialization leads to shifts in the contribution of neural substrates over childhood, moving from an early dependence on a distributed system supported by long‐range connections to later reliance on specialized local circuitry. Our findings demonstrate that despite the component factor structure being stable across childhood, the underlying brain systems supporting working memory change. Taking the age of the child into account, and not just their overall score, is likely to be critical for understanding the nature of the limitations on their working memory capacity.

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“…In research demonstrating a strong relation between WM capacity and fluid intelligence/reasoning (Kane et al, 2004;Kyllonen & Christal, 1990;Süß, Oberauer, Wittmann, Wilhelm, & Schulze, 2002), it has proven fruitful to combine experimentally informed task design with an individual differences perspective. Measures of individual differences, however, presume reliable and valid indicators of a construct, which leads to the question of what defines a good WM task (Conway et al, 2005;Oberauer, 2005).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Complex span versus updating tasks of working memory: The gap is not that deep.

Schmiedek¹,

Hildebrandt²,

Lövdén³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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211

184

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How to best measure working memory capacity is an issue of ongoing debate. Besides established complex span tasks, which combine short-term memory demands with generally unrelated secondary tasks, there exists a set of paradigms characterized by continuous and simultaneous updating of several items in working memory, such as the n-back, memory updating, or alpha span tasks. With a latent variable analysis (N ϭ 96) based on content-heterogeneous operationalizations of both task families, the authors found a latent correlation between a complex span factor and an updating factor that was not statistically different from unity (r ϭ .96). Moreover, both factors predicted fluid intelligence (reasoning) equally well. The authors conclude that updating tasks measure working memory equally well as complex span tasks. Processes involved in building, maintaining, and updating arbitrary bindings may constitute the common working memory ability underlying performance on reasoning, complex span, and updating tasks.

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The Generality of Working Memory Capacity: A Latent-Variable Approach to Verbal and Visuospatial Memory Span and Reasoning.

Cited by 1,402 publications

References 128 publications

What limits working memory capacity?

What limits working memory capacity?

Differences in brain morphology and working memory capacity across childhood

Complex span versus updating tasks of working memory: The gap is not that deep.

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