The nature of individual differences in working memory capacity: active maintenance in primary memory and controlled search from secondary memory.

Full Abstract

Studies examining individual differences in working memory capacity have suggested that individuals with low working memory capacities demonstrate impaired performance on a variety of attention and memory tasks compared with individuals with high working memory capacities. This working memory limitation can be conceived of as arising from 2 components:
a dynamic attention component (primary memory) and a probabilistic cue-dependent search component (secondary memory). This framework is used to examine previous individual differences studies of working memory capacity, and new evidence is examined on the basis of predictions of the framework to performance on immediate free recall. It is suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity are partially due to the ability to maintain information accessible in primary memory and the ability to search for information from secondary memory.((c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).

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Author information

Author/s: Unsworth, Nash (N); Engle, Randall W (RW);

Affiliation: School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. nunswor(-atsign-)uga.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Psychological review (Psychol Rev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jan; vol 114 (issue 1) : pp 104-32

Dates: Created 2007/01/17; Completed 2007/03/01;

PMID: 17227183, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Memory
Models, Psychological
Psychology - statistics & numerical data

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