IUBio

Working Memory

Jac.m.a.m. Oppers Jac at Oppers.nl
Wed Jun 14 03:35:57 EST 2000


On Tue, 13 Jun 2000 18:23:15 +0200, "Christian Stapfer"
<chstapfer at nospam.bluewin.ch> wrote:

>jste wrote:
>> Encyclopædia Britannica
>> Memory is one of the most widely studied cognitive functions,
>> and a number of different aspects of memory are recognized.
>> The labels short-term memory, primary memory, and working
>> memory refer to the temporary storage of information that
>> is necessary for the performance of many cognitive tasks.
>> In order to understand this sentence, for example, a reader
>> must maintain the first half of the sentence in working
>> memory while reading the second half. This working memory
>> has been graphically described as the memory one uses to
>> hold a telephone number in mind after looking it up in a
>> directory and while dialing. The capacity of working memory
>> is limited, and it decays if not rehearsed.
>>
>> Simple but adequate I think
>
>From reading "Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition"
>(Walter Kintsch, 1998) I get the impression that the
>above definition is not 'adequate', and that a truly
>adequate definition of 'working memory' is not likely
>to be all that simple.
>    Neither the traditionally assumed severe capacity
>limits (7 +/- 2), nor the idea of moving content from
>long-term memory to short-term ('working') memory and
>back, seem to be generally valid.
>    Kintsch uses the terms 'short-term working memory'
>(ST-WM) and 'long-term working memory' (LT-WM), as well
>as the idea of 'retrieval structures' in order to theorize
>the role of 'working memory' in text understanding.
>
>Christian Stapfer

I understand. And, to elaborate, of course, the viewpoint of
biobehavioral selectionism, I get the impression, memory is being
pictured by implicitly present build-in cooks of the month, agents, 
to graphically describe its use in a lot of research articles filling
textbooks. So, I prefer to define your *current sensitivities* for SR-
relations and SS-complexes to be your "working memory", simply
summarized as *you* being "in charge". That is all.

Jac.
jac.oppers at philips.com (replaces jac at natlab.research.philips.com)
j.m.a.m.oppers@(hccnet|hetnet|chello).nl






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