This special issue ponders a detailed and contemporary analysis of the theoretical underpinnings of short-term and working memory. Articles focus on short-term memory for phonological, semantic, and spatial material, on executive function and on short-term forgetting. The empirical perspectives include the neuroimaging of short-term memory, short-term memory development and the neuropsychology and neurobiology of memory, in addition to laboratory-based experimental studies. Together, these articles identify significant current models and approaches to short-term and working memory, providing a broad set of perspectives which illustrate the wide impact of working memory on the understanding of human cognition.

This special issue of the International Journal of Psychology had its origins in the Quebec 98 Conference on Short-Term Memory, held in Quebec City, Canada, in June 1998. Following this conference, participants were invited to submit contributions based on, and expanding upon, their presentation at this conference. The enthusiastic response made it possible to collect the exciting selection of articles that you will find herein. It must be noted that because of the finite journal space available, the editors and reviewers were faced with the difficult problem of selecting only a limited number of the excellent articles that were submitted. The outcome of this process is this special issue, which we believe provides an up-to-date overview of current research on short-term/working memory, including the challenges, controversies, and recent theoretical advances in this field.

The idea of one's memory "filling up" is a humorous misconception of how memory in general is thought to work; it actually has no capacity limit. However, the idea of a "full brain" makes more sense with reference to working memory, which is the limited amount of information a person can hold temporarily in an especially accessible form for use in the completion of almost any challenging cognitive task. This groundbreaking book explains the evidence supporting Cowan's theoretical proposal about working memory capacity, and compares it to competing perspectives. Cognitive psychologists profoundly disagree on how working memory is limited: whether by the number of units that can be retained (and, if so, what kind of units and how many), the types of interfering material, the time that has elapsed, some combination of these mechanisms, or none of them. The book assesses these hypotheses and examines explanations of why capacity limits occur, including vivid biological, cognitive, and evolutionary accounts. The book concludes with a discussion of the practical importance of capacity limits in daily life. This 10th anniversary Classic Edition will continue to be accessible to a wide range of readers and serve as an invaluable reference for all memory researchers.

Psychology of Learning and Motivation publishes empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning to complex learning and problem solving. Each chapter thoughtfully integrates the writings of leading contributors, who present and discuss significant bodies of research relevant to their discipline. Volume 63 includes chapters on such varied topics as memory and imagery, statistical regularities, eyewitness lineups, embodied attention, the teleological choice rule, inductive reasoning, causal reasoning and cognitive and neural components of insight. - Volume 63 of the highly regarded Psychology of Learning and Motivation series - An essential reference for researchers and academics in cognitive science - Relevant to both applied concerns and basic research

Short-term memory, sometimes referred to as "primary", "working" or "active" memory, is said to hold a small amount of information for about 20 seconds. Estimates of short-term memory capacity vary -- from about 3 or 4 elements (i.e., words, digits, or letters) to about 9 elements: a commonly cited capacity is 7±2 elements. In contrast, long-term memory indefinitely stores a seemingly unlimited amount of information. Short-term memory can be described as the capacity (or capacities) for holding in mind, in an active, highly available state, a small amount of information. The information held in short-term memory may be: recently processed sensory input; items recently retrieved from long-term memory; or the result of recent mental processing, although that is more generally related to the concept of working memory. This book presents the latest research in the field from around the world.

Children who have low self-confidence; a negative attitude towards school; score below average on assessments of language comprehension; and have an erratic pattern of errors with no specific linguistic weaknesses on assessments of comprehension, may be suffering from short-term memory difficulties. Written by a practising speech language therapist, this book provides a structured yet flexible approach to addressing the needs of children with short-term memory difficulties. "Short-term memory therapy can be of great benefit with very positive results. "Memory therapy can have a direct and positive impact on a child's receptive language skills, self-confidence and ability to learn. "This practical resource provides a complete programme of ideas for developing a child's short-term memory skills. "The programme can be administered in its entirety, or as an accompaniment to clinician's existing packages of care and is best suited to individual intervention. "The book provides a structured programme for individual therapy, although activities may be adapted for group therapy. "Containing photocopiable activity sheets and supporting material, ideal for use with 7 to 11 year-olds, the book also includes child-friendly recording forms and progress charts. Although written primarily for speech language therapists, this book will prove useful in teaching and practising memory strategies for learning support assistants, teachers, educational psychologists and anyone working with school-aged children. "Anyone working with school-aged children would find the contents of the book useful." Child Language Teaching and Therapy

This work summarizes the current state of empirical and theoretical work on impairments of short-term memory (often caused by damage in the left cerebral hemisphere) and contains chapters from virtually every scientist in Europe and North America working on the problem. The chapters present evidence from both normal and brain-damaged patients, providing a comprehensive view of the functional characteristics of auditory-verbal short-term memory and its neurobiological correlates. Two neuropsychological issues are discussed in detail: the specific patterns of immediate memory impairment resulting from brain damage, with reference to both multi-store and the interactive-activation theoretical frameworks, and the relation between verbal STM and sentence comprehension disorders in patients with a defective immediate auditory memory, an area of major controversy in recent years.