Working Memory

Working Memory is the aspect of our cognitive system that enables human beings to consider, manipulate, and otherwise bring to mind intellectual information. That is, our ability to bring to mind information stored within the mind, whether that is information stored within the long-term memory (previously learned information) or within the short-term memory (information we are presently learning).

For example, as I write these words I am holding in my mind a collection of pieces of information, both from long-term memory (previously learned information) and from short-term memory (prescient notes and reference material). My working memory functions as my ability to ponder, shift my focus between, examine, analyze, manipulate, and rearrange those pieces of knowledge in my mind as I am attempting to linguistically organize them as grammatically coherent (and ideally, good) sentences.

Many people use the terms working memory and short-term memory synonymously. However, a number of theorists believe these aspects of human cognition are distinct from one another because of the fact that short-term memory refers exclusively to information that is not already stored within the long-term memory of the human mind. In other words, the short-term memory stores information that is completely new to the individual, or information a person has been exposed to in the past, but which hasn’t been retained through a transition from short-term to long-term memory.

Working memory on the other hand is our cognitive capacity to manipulate both new information and previously learned information from the long-term memory, calling this information to mind, holding it there, and ‘moving’ it around as we wish. Since working memory can use information from both the short-term and long-term memories, their is justification for a distinction between working memory and short-term memory. Today most theorists use “working memory” to replace, or conceptually subsume within itself, the earlier “short-term memory”.

The term “working memory” was coined by the famed psychologists George Armitage Miller and Eugene Galanter (considered as the founders of cognitive psychology) as well as Karl Pibram (the famous psychologist, neuropsychologist and neurosurgeon who did pioneering work probing the function and structure of the brain, among other works). In the 1960’s the term was in use within theories that likened the mind to a computer, making “working memory” of cognition analogous to RAM (“random access memory”) of modern computers.

The neural mechanisms of maintaining information in the working memory originated with animal research. In one experiment, the electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex of a monkey was recorded as an experimenter — within the visual field of the monkey — was observed by the monkey to put food beneath one of two identical cups (like the street performer trick usually with 3–4 cups and some object which are then deftly rearranged using sleight-of-hand to trick the observer). The cups were then screened from view for a period of time. When the cups were shown again to the monkey after that delay, when the monkey was able to repeatedly choose the correct cup on the first try, this proved that information — knowledge of which cup the food was placed under — was indeed stored in the working memory of the primate.

A number of theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain the anatomical and cognitive mechanisms of the function of working memory. The two that are currently most influential are the Multicomponent Model (also called Baddeley’s model of working memory) and the Working Memory as part of Long-Term Memory model.

Notes

Resources

1. Working Memory. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory>. Accessed 14 Sept 2023.