Changing concepts of working memory

Nat Neurosci. 2014 Mar;17(3):347-56. doi: 10.1038/nn.3655. Epub 2014 Feb 25.

Abstract

Working memory is widely considered to be limited in capacity, holding a fixed, small number of items, such as Miller's 'magical number' seven or Cowan's four. It has recently been proposed that working memory might better be conceptualized as a limited resource that is distributed flexibly among all items to be maintained in memory. According to this view, the quality rather than the quantity of working memory representations determines performance. Here we consider behavioral and emerging neural evidence for this proposal.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Memory, Short-Term / physiology*
  • Models, Theoretical*