You are invited to a talk co-sponsored by the Cognitive Sciences
Centre, Psychology Department (Cognitive Research Group) and
Department of Electronics and Computer Science (Intelligence, Agents,
Multimedia Research Group) at SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY.
DATE: Wednesday Dec 6th
TIME: 12:50
PLACE: Shackleton Building Room 3095
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/cowan.htm
CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT OF WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY
Professor Nelson Cowan
Department of Psychology
University of Missouri
210 McAlester Hall Columbia
MO 65211 USA
CowanN at missouri.eduhttp://web.missouri.edu/~psycowan
Visiting Professor
Department of Experimental Psychology
University of Bristol
SUMMARY: "Working memory" is that small amount of information
that we can hold in mind at a particular moment, to be used in
understanding language and in solving problems of various sorts.
Three properties may be basic to the operation of working memory:
(1) our capacity to focus attention, (2) how much information can
be retrieved into the focus of our attention and (3) how long
information outside the focus of our attention can stay active. I
will discuss how these three properties can be be measured and
how they change during childhood.
Cowan, N. (2001) The Magical Number 4 in Short-term Memory: A
Reconsideration of Mental Storage Capacity. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 24 (1)
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.cowan.html
Miller, G.A. (1956). The magical number 7, plus or minus two: Some
limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological
Review, 63, 81-97.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/07/30/
NELSON COWAN (Ph.D. 1980, University of Wisconsin - Madison)
is Middlebush Professor of the Social Sciences, in the
Department of Psychology at the University of Missouri -
Columbia. He has written one book (Cowan, N., 1995,
Attention and memory: An integrated framework, Oxford
University Press) and edited another (1997, The development
of memory in childhood, Psychology Press), and has 100 other
publications on working memory, its development, and its
relation to attention. He is former Associate Editor of the
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition (1995-1999) and won the 1998 University of
Missouri Chancellor Award for Research and Creative
Activities.