This volume covers a broad range of current research topics addressing the function of visuospatial attention and working memory. It discusses a variety of perspectives ranging from evolutionary and genetic underpinnings to neural substrates/computational processes and the connection between attention and working memory. Contributions address the topic at the molecular, system and evolutionary scales and will be of interest to a range of audiences from animal behaviour specialists, experimental psychologists to clinicians in the field of psychiatry and neurology.

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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.

Representation of the visual and spatial properties of our environment is a pivotal requirement of everyday cognition. We can mentally represent the visual form of objects. We can extract information from several of the senses as to the location of objects in relation to ourselves and to other objects nearby. For some of those objects we can reach out and manipulate them. We can also imagine ourselves manipulating objects in advance of doing so, or even when it would be impossible to do so physically. The problem posed to science is how these cognitive operations are accomplished, and proffered accounts lie in two essentially parallel research endeavours, working memory and imagery. Working memory is thought to pervade everyday cognition, to provide on-line processing and temporary storage, and to update, moment to moment, our representation of the current state of our environment and our interactions with that environment. There is now a strong case for the claims of working memory in the area of phonological and articulatory functions, all of which appear to contribute to everyday activities such as counting, arithmetic, vocabulary acquisition, and some aspects of reading and language comprehension. The claims for visual and spatial working memory functions are less convincing. Most notable has been the assumption that visual and spatial working memory are intimately involved in the generation, retention and manipulations of visual images. There has until recently been little hard evidence to justify that assumption, and the research on visual and spatial working memory has focused on a relatively restricted range of imagery tasks and phenomena. In a more or less independent development, the literature on visual imagery has now amassed a voluminous corpus of data and theory about a wide range of imagery phenomena. Despite this, few books on imagery refer to the concept of working memory in any detail, or specify the nature of the working memory system that might be involved in mental imagery. This essay follows a line of reconciliation and positive critiquing in exploring the possible overlap between mental imagery and working memory. Theoretical development in the book draws on data from both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuropsychology. The aim is to stimulate debate, to address directly a number of assumptions that hitherto have been implicit, and to assess the contribution of the concept of working memory to our understanding of these intriguing core aspects of human cognition.

It is only relatively recently that it has been possible to study the neural processes that might underlie working memory, leading to a proliferation of research in this domain. This volume brings together leading researchers from around the world to summarise current knowledge of this field.

Working memory--the ability to keep important information in mind while comprehending, thinking, and acting--varies considerably from person to person and changes dramatically during each person's life. Understanding such individual and developmental differences is crucial because working memory is a major contributor to general intellectual functioning. This volume offers a state-of-the-art, integrative, and comprehensive approach to understanding variation in working memory by presenting explicit, detailed comparisons of the leading theories. It incorporates views from the different research groups that operate on each side of the Atlantic, and covers working-memory research on a wide variety of populations, including healthy adults, children with and without learning difficulties, older adults, and adults and children with neurological disorders. A particular strength of this volume is that each research group explicitly addresses the same set of theoretical questions, from the perspective of both their own theoretical and experimental work and from the perspective of relevant alternative approaches. Through these questions, each research group considers their overarching theory of working memory, specifies the critical sources of working memory variation according to their theory, reflects on the compatibility of their approach with other approaches, and assesses their contribution to general working memory theory. This shared focus across chapters unifies the volume and highlights the similarities and differences among the various theories. Each chapter includes both a summary of research positions and a detailed discussion of each position. Variation in Working Memory achieves coherence across its chapters, while presenting the entire range of current theoretical and experimental approaches to variation in working memory.

Working memory is the cognitive system in charge of the temporary maintenance of information in view of its on-going processing. Lying at the centre of cognition, it has become a key concept in psychological science. The book presents a critical review and synthesis of the working memory literature, and also presents an innovative new theory - the Time-Based Resource-Sharing (TBRS) model. Tracing back the evolution of the concept of working memory, from its introduction by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974 and the development of their modal model, Barrouillet and Camos explain how an alternative conception could have been developed from the very beginning, and why it is needed today. This alternative model takes into account the temporal dynamics of mental functioning. The book describes a new architecture for working memory, and provides a description of its functioning, its development, the sources of individual differences, and hints about neural substrates. The authors address central and debated questions about working memory, and also more general issues about cognitive architecture and functioning. Working Memory: Loss and Reconstruction will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers of the psychology of memory.