Working Memory Capacity

by Nelson Cowan

The idea of one's memory "filling up" is a humorous misconception of how memory in general is thought to work; it is 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 completion of almost any challenging cognitive task.

This groundbreaking book explains the evidence supporting Cowan's theoretical proposal about working memory capacity, and compares it to competing perspectives. Cognitive psychologists profoundly disagree on how working memory is 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.

Incorporating the latest from the recent surge in research into working memory capacity limits and the remarkable new insights provided by neuroimaging techniques, this book serves as an invaluable resource for all memory researchers and is accessible to a wide range of readers.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2004

Reviews

[KC · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping to understand the how's and why's of working memory capacity and I got what I came for, but the experience could have been a lot smoother if this book had been more carefully edited. I found many of the descriptions of experiments very difficult to parse (although the author may have been assuming more background in this field than I have), and I frequently became confused as to the point the author was trying to make in a given section. The final chapter, on why we have this particular capacity limit (or indeed a limit at all) was the most interesting to me, and I think it could be read independently of the rest of the book for those who don't need the details on exactly what this limit is.