Proceedings of The World Conference on Social Sciences
Year: 2019
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/worldcss.2019.09.544
What is Working Memory, and How is it “Working” in the Brain?
Colin McMillan
ABSTRACT:
Working memory plays vital roles in virtually any type of our behaviors and cognitive tasks, including learning and decision-making. In this paper, the nature and the structure of working memory system are discussed. Working memory is characterized by a short duration of retention and severely limited capacity. This paper analyzes various approaches to study the characteristics of working memory and theoretical models of the underlying core processes. Finally, this paper also discusses an ongoing debate on whether working memory relies on a distinct mechanism from the long-term memory system.
Keywords: Psychology, Working Memory, Cognitive Science, Memory Systems.