Models of Working Memory Mechanisms of Active Maintenance and Executive Control

Working memory is currently a 'hot' topic in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Because of their radically different scopes and emphases, however, comparing different models and theories and understanding how they relate to one another has been a difficult task. This volume offers a much-needed forum for systematically comparing and contrasting existing models of working memory. It does so by asking each contributor to address the same comprehensive set of important theoretical questions on working memory. The answers to these questions provided in the volume elucidate the emerging general consensus on the nature of working memory among different theorists and crystallize incompatible theoretical claims that must be resolved in future research. As such, this volume serves not only as a milestone that documents the state-of-the-art in the field but also as a theoretical guidebook that will likely promote new lines of research and more precise and comprehensive models of working memory.

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Models of working memory: an introduction Priti Shah and Akira Miyake; 2. Working memory: the multiple-component model Alan D. Baddeley and Robert H. Logie; 3. An embedded-processes model of working memory Nelson Cowan; 4. Individual differences in working memory capacity and what they tell us about controlled attention, general fluid intelligence and functions of the prefrontal cortex Randall W. Engle, Michael J. Kane and Stephen W. Tuholski; 5. Modelling working memory in a unified architecture: an ACT-R perspective Marsha C. Lovett, Lynne M. Reder and Christian Lebiere; 6. Insights into working memory from the perspective of the EPIC architecture for modelling skilled perceptual-motor and cognitive human performance David E. Kieras, David E. Meyer, Shane Mueller and Travis Seymour; 7. The soar cognitive architecture and human working memory Richard M. Young and Richard L. Lewis; 8. Long-term working memory as an alternative to capacity models of working memory in everyday skilled performance K. Anders Ericsson and Peter F. Delaney; 9. Interacting cognitive subsystems: modelling working memory phenomena within a multiprocessor architecture Philip J. Barnard; 10. Working memory in a multilevel hybrid connectionist control architecture (CAP2) Walter Schneider; 11. A biologically based computational model of working memory Randall C. O' Reilly, Todd S. Braver and Jonathan D. Cohen; 12. Models of working memory: eight questions and some general issues Walter Kintsch, Alice F. Healy, Mary Hegarty, Bruce F. Pennington and Timothy A. Salthouse; 13. Toward unified theories of working memory: emerging general consensus, unresolved theoretical issues and future research directions Akika Miyake and Priti Shah; Indexes.

Working memory plays an essential role in the performance of virtually all complex cognitive activities. Chapters compares existing models of working memory by addressing the same set of important and controversial theoretical questions. The volume provides a synthesis of seemingly disparate models and outlines future research directions for the field.