WORKING MEMORY

Literature Review

An Introduction
Working memory has fascinated scholars since its inception in the 1960’s Indeed,
more than a century of scientific studies revolving around memory in the fields of
psychology, biology, or neuroscience have not completely agreed upon a unified
categorization of memory, especially in terms of its functions and mechanisms .
Recent research is bringing to light the importance of working memory in everyone's
daily life in academic, professional, and social settings.​This document seeks to
present an up-to-date introductory overview of the realm of working memory by
outlining several working memory studies from the psychological and neuro-sciences
perspectives in an effort to refine and unite the scientific knowledge concerning
working memory.

What is Working Memory?

Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that is
responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. Working
memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and
behavior. Working memory plays an essential role in complex cognition. Everyday
cognitive tasks – such as reading a newspaper article, calculating the appropriate
amount to tip in a restaurant, and comparing and contrasting various attributes of
different apartments to decide which to rent – often involve multiple steps with
intermediate results that need to be kept in mind temporarily to accomplish the task
at hand successfully.
Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology,
neuropsychology, and neuroscience. Numerous models have been proposed for
how working memory functions, both anatomically and cognitively. Of those, the two
that have been most influential are discussed in this paper.

Model Representations of Working Memory

1. The Multicomponent Working Memory Model

Baddeley and Hitch, in their research, developed a model of working memory in
which they proposed there are two slave systems, the phonological loop and the
visuospatial sketchpad. The two slave systems are defined as:

● Phonological loop -- This system is responsible for storing phonological

(verbal) information. It continuously rehearses phonological information to
prevent decay. Information is repeated over and over again through the act of
sub-vocal rehearsal, such as when one tries to remember a telephone
number and repeats it again and again.

● Visuospatial Sketchpad -- This system is responsible for the storage of

visual and spatial (non-verbal) information through the manipulation of visual
images and the creation of mental maps.

It was not until 2000 that another component termed ​“episodic buffer” was
introduced into this working memory model. Episodic buffer was regarded as a
temporary storage system that modulates and integrates different sensory
information. In short, the central executive functions as the “control center” that
oversees manipulation, recall, and processing of information (non-verbal or verbal)
for meaningful functions such as decision-making, problem-solving or even
manuscript writing.

Researchers have attempted to measure working memory capabilities through both

verbal (phonological) and nonverbal tasks (visuospatial). Verbal tasks used in
research include:
● Digit Span --- In 2003, Geers explained an individual's digit span as “the
number of spoken digits he or she is able to repeat back in the correct order
(forward span) or in the reverse of the order (backward span)” . The string of
numbers presented increases with every trial. The subject's digit span score is
determined based on the length of the longest string.

● Non-Word Repetition​-- For this task the subject is required to repeat

individual non-words of increasing length from one to five-syllable non-words.

● Sentence Completion and Recall​-- This task requires the subject to listen to
a series of sentences, fill in the missing last word in each sentence, and
repeat the words of each of the sentences presented.

2. An Embedded-Processes Model of Working Memory

 Cowan (1999, 2005) proposed the embedded-processes model that highlights
the roles of long-term memory and attention in facilitating working memory
functioning. Arguing that the Baddeley and Hitch model simplified perceptual
processing of information presentation to the working memory store without
considering the focus of attention to the stimuli presented, According to Cowan
,working memory can be conceptualized as a short-term storage component with a
capacity limit that is heavily dependent on attention and other central executive
processes that make use of stored information or that interact with long-term
memory.

The Nature of Working Memory Limitations (Capacity)

William James (1890) stated that, unlike the virtually unlimited amount of
knowledge that can be stored in a person’s “secondary memory,” only a small
amount of information can be kept conscious at any one time in one’s “primary
memory.” The best-known account of working memory limitations is George Miller’s
(1956) proposal of capacity limits, in which he argued that people are able to keep
track of a “magic number 7 plus or minus 2” chunks of information. Following are
some of the experimental studies of working memory capacity.

● Decay theories : ​The most elaborate decay-based theory of working memory

to date is the "time-based resource sharing model". ​The TBRS model states
that the rate of short-term forgetting that participants display relies on the
attentional demand (or “cognitive load”) of concurrent tasks, because memory
traces are assumed to decay when they are not reactivated or “refreshed” by
attention.
Barrouillet and colleagues have demonstrated a cognitive load effect in
a number of studies. For example , in an experiment participants were
required to complete continuous reading and operation span tasks (i.e.,
reading lists of equations, or reading lists of equations and calculating and
providing the solutions) while simultaneously memorizing strings of
consonants. Barrouillet reported that the higher cognitive load of the operation
span task compared to the continuous reading span task and an articulatory
suppression condition resulted in poorer memory performance. They
interpreted this as suggesting that the high cognitive load prevented rehearsal
of the memory set.
● Resource theories:​ ​Resource theories assume that the capacity of working
memory is a limited resource that must be shared between all representations
that need to be maintained in working memory simultaneously.Some resource
 theorists also assume that maintenance and concurrent processing share the
same resource; this can explain why maintenance is typically impaired by a
concurrent processing demand.​ ​Resource theories have been very successful
in explaining data from tests of working memory for simple visual features,
such as colors or orientations of bars.

● Interference Theories​ : ​One of interference is retrieval competition. For

example, when the task is to remember a list of 7 words in their order, we
need to start recall with the first word. While trying to retrieve the first word,
the second word, which is represented in proximity, is accidentally retrieved
as well, and the two compete for being recalled. Errors in serial recall tasks
are often confusions of neighboring items on a memory list (so-called
transpositions), showing that retrieval competition plays a role in limiting our
ability to recall lists in order, and probably also in other working memory tasks.

How does working memory develop?

Working memory capabilities change over an individual’s lifespan. This is

most noticeable in terms of the number of items or chunks that can be held in
working memory, which increases steadily with maturation and reaches a peak
around the age of sixteen years, a finding which is consistent across many cultures
.The working memory capacity that a person has in late adolescence is likely to
remain constant until approximately forty-five years of age when it starts to
decline.Several explanations have been offered for this decline in psychology. One is
the processing speed theory of cognitive aging by Tim Salthouse. ​Drawing on the
finding of general slowing of cognitive processes as people grow older, Salthouse
argues that slower processing leaves more time for working-memory contents to
decay, thus reducing effective capacity. However, the decline of working-memory
capacity cannot be entirely attributed to slowing because capacity declines more in
old age than speed. (Adapted from Alloway 2011)

Can working memory capacity be improved?

There is evidence that working memory functioning can be altered .Functional

magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies following working memory training have
shown an increase in brain activity in the prefrontal (executive control) and parietal
(visuospatial functioning) areas of the brain, as well as changes in dopamine
receptor density (implicated in focused attention) This suggests that there is plasticity
in the neural networks involved in working memory. Furthermore, these changes
appear in the multimodal association cortices, which are parts of the brain that are
not tied to any specific sensory modality but are involved in a wide range of cognitive
activities that tap working memory (​ Olesen, Westerberg & Klingberg 2004).​

The Relationship of Working Memory to Long-Term

Memory and Knowledge.

On the basis of the well-known serial position effects (i.e., the primacy and recency
effects in free recall) and some neuropsychological dissociations (as demonstrated
by such patients as HM), early information-processing models of memory assumed a
structural distinction between STM (or working memory) and LTM. Moreover, these
models considered STM a gateway or stepping stone to a more permanent LTM,5
proposing that information that is either rehearsed, attended to, or organized
properly in STS is transferred to an LTS. In contrast to this structural view of human
memory, an alternative view emphasized the continuity between working memory
and LTM and proposed that working memory can be considered an activated portion
of LTM representations (Norman, 1968). This more continuous view gained some
popularity in cognitive psychology as empirical data that challenged the
interpretations of the hallmark empirical findings for the structural view – the serial
position effects and the neuropsychological dissociations – started to accumulate .

NEURAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING WORKING MEMORY

The first insights into the neuronal and neurotransmitter basis of working memory
came from animal research. The work of Jacobsen and Fulton in the 1930s first
showed that lesions to the PFC impaired spatial working memory performance in
monkeys. The later work of Joaquin Fuster recorded the electrical activity of neurons
in the PFC of monkeys while they were doing a delayed matching task. In that task,
the monkey sees how the experimenter places a bit of food under one of two
identical-looking cups. A shutter is then lowered for a variable delay period,
screening off the cups from the monkey's view. After the delay, the shutter opens
and the monkey is allowed to retrieve the food from under the cups. Successful
retrieval in the first attempt – something the animal can achieve after some training
on the task – requires holding the location of the food in memory over the delay
period. Fuster found neurons in the PFC that fired mostly during the delay period,
suggesting that they were involved in representing the food location while it was
invisible. Later research has shown similar delay-active neurons also in the posterior
parietal cortex, the thalamus, the caudate, and the globus pallidus. The work of
Goldman-Rakic and others showed that principal sulcal, dorsolateral PFC
interconnects with all of these brain regions, and that neuronal microcircuits within
PFC are able to maintain information in working memory through recurrent excitatory
glutamate networks of pyramidal cells that continue to fire throughout the delay
period. These circuits are tuned by lateral inhibition from GABAergic
interneurons.The neuromodulatory arousal systems markedly alter PFC working
memory function; for example, either too little or too much dopamine or
norepinephrine impairs PFC network firing and working memory performance.

Conclusion
The research done so for in working memory and as summarized in this
literature review suggest that researchers have been quite successful in answering
the following questions about Working memory which are :
1. Basic model and representations in working memory.
2. The control and regulation of working memory which includes questions like
how the memory is developed and when does it decay or is it improvable.
3. The nature of working memory limitations i.e the capacity of working memory.
4. Role of working memory in day to day cognitive activities.
5. How is Long term memory and Knowledge related to working memory.
6. The biological implementation or the hardware of working memory.
7. Relation between working memory and attention & consciousness.