Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
FIVE CENTRAL FEATURES OF THE MODEL
We describe a model of working memory that is developed within the ACT-R cognitive architecture. Some of its main features are derived from the basic features of ACT-R:
(1) Processing depends on the current goal of the system.
(2) The accessibility of declarative and procedural knowledge varies with experience.
In addition, the following features are important to working memory in particular:
(3) There is a limited attentional resource, focused on the current goal, that increases the accessibility of goal-relevant knowledge relative to other knowledge.
(4) In more complex and memory-demanding tasks, this limited resource is spread more thinly thus impairing retrieval of goal-relevant items.
(5) The “capacity” of this attentional resource may vary from person to person, influencing the ability to access goal-relevant information across domains.
In performing almost any cognitive task, one must engage working memory to maintain and retrieve information during processing. For example, in mental arithmetic (e.g., multiplying large numbers without pencil and paper), one must hold intermediate results in memory while solving the problem. Similarly, in sentence processing, one must maintain various syntactic and semantic structures until subsequent processing reveals their roles. Because working memory is involved in so many tasks, studying its characteristics and its impact on cognitive processes is critical to gaining a deeper understanding of how people perform cognitive tasks in general.
Past research highlights two important results, each of which demonstrates that working memory modulates task performance.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.