Cogmed: What is Working Memory

Dr. Torkel Klingberg, Cogmed's Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, describes working memory, a key cognitive fuction vital to manipulating information and controlling impulses.

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[zadeh79]

WMC facilitates real-time abstraction, as it allows A) variables of the problem to be maintained, so you don't forget the problem, and B) time to retrieve information relevant to the problem from LTM. Remember, in real-time, people are faced by a stream of information, and all problems cannot be solved by simply processing out of STM. The 'problem' may contain variables, which are hidden several moments in the past.

[zadeh79]

The existence of WMC creates an interesting effect, with respect to problem solving ability, because in real time, individuals with poor WMC, should be blind to a whole class of real-world problems. Therefore, there are many problems, which have an under-rated value, with respect to novelty. But on conventional IQ tests, where the subject has all day to look at, and examine the problem (and, thus, can keep the problem variables alive in STM), such deficiencies would not be apparent.

[zadeh79]

@mosc7fm3 So the amount of bits (chunks) of information that can flood STM, From LTM, is different than the amount of chunks that can flood STM from externally presented stimuli. My idea was that WMC, is and essentially, an intermediate memory system, that accepts transfers from objects in STM. And the role of WMC, is to temporarily extend the period of time the objects can be maintained (via articulation).

[zadeh79]

What is most interesting, is that the long-held (and rather convenient) assumption of intellectual constancy, has been violated. There is clear evidence, of a long-term increase in fluid intelligence, after WM training, and various other mental exercises. In laymen's terms, your intelligence CAN increase, and a lot of people, for a very long time, have done everything to hide this truth.

[zadeh79]

A well known fact, is that subject scores on the Raven's Matrices (a highly fluid test of intelligence) have gone up drastically, in only the past 70 years. Because in increase in IQ cannot explain this (natural selection could not have increased IQ's that quickly), the explanation must be somewhere else. Conventional models of LTM /STM storage, must be incomplete, and in fact, it is becoming clearer that Fluid intelligence is related to various structures of the pre-frontal cortex.

[mosc7fm3]

it is basically when STM can hold infor that has been RETRIEVED from LTM for temporary use. eg arithmetic problems... STM holds information from LTM about how to 'add' numbers together, or work out change in order to tip a waiter.

i personally think its just LTM that has the ability to remember how to solve arithmetic problems etc, because the information is essentially being retrieved from there in the first place. however, this is Baddley's Working Model THEORY

[zadeh79]

Keeping information in mind for a brief period of time, sounds more like Short term memory. WORKING memory, as I have come to see it includes STM, inhibition, and 'attention shifting'