Working memory (WM) deficits are fundamental problems of children with average intelligence but with specific learning disorders in reading and/or math. Depending on the task, these deficits manifest themselves as a domain-specific storage constraint (i.e., the inefficient accessing and availability of phonological representations, e.g., numbers, phonemes) and/or a domain-general monitoring constraint (limitations in controlled attentional processing, i.e., updating, inhibition). Recent studies suggest that growth in the executive component of WM is significantly related to such children’s growth in reading and/or math. Although constraints in WM can be modified, WM constraints in performance in children with reading disorders (RD) and/or math disorders (MD) remain when compared to their average achieving counterparts across a broad age span. Taken together, children with RD and/MD suffer fundamental problems related to the phonological loop (STM) and controlled attention (executive) component of WM.

This chapter looks at the cognitive correlates of consciousness, and how consciousness is related to the ideas of selection and limitation. It begins by looking at how cognitive processes such as attention, particularly visual attention, language, thought, mental imagery and inner speech involve consciousness. It looks at cross-cultural differences in cognition. We then look at the neuroscience of the default-mode network. The chapter then looks at a number of models of consciousness based in cognition, including the global workspace theory of Baars, and the multiple drafts model of Dennett. We consider the underlying neuroscience. The chapter then considers how cognition enables us to construct a model or representation of the world, and the way in which consciousness might emerge from that representation. We consider again emergence and complexity. Finally the chapter examines the possible role of quantum mechanics as a basis for understanding consciousness.

This chapter examines the concept of the self. It begins by looking at the work of Hume, and the distinction between ego and bundle theories of the self. We consider the distinction between the knower and the known, and the idea of the homunculus. The chapter examines Damasio’s model of three levels of self, and other ‘types’ of self. It looks at how the self is related to psychological models of control and executive processing. It then looks at our perception of our continuity of existence, and how it can be disrupted by age, sleep and amnesia. The chapter examines the neuroscience of the self, and which neurological structures give rise to our sense of self. We look in detail at split-brain studies and what we can learn from them. It then looks at dissociative states and dissociative identity disorders (multiple personalities). It also looks at the boundaries of the self, and phantom limbs and the rubber hand illusion. The chapter concludes by asking whether the self is just another illusion.