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2 - Working Memory Capacity in Hot and Cold Cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2010

By
Nash Unsworth ,
Richard P. Heitz  and
Randall W. Engle
Edited by
Randall W. Engle ,
Grzegorz Sedek ,
Ulrich von Hecker  and
Daniel N. McIntosh
Nash Unsworth
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Richard P. Heitz
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Randall W. Engle
Affiliation:
Professor and Chair in the School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Randall W. Engle
Affiliation:
Georgia Institute of Technology
Grzegorz Sedek
Affiliation:
Warsaw School of Social Psychology and Polish Academy of Sciences
Ulrich von Hecker
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Daniel N. McIntosh
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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Summary

Much has been said about the relationship between measures of Working Memory Capacity (WMC) and higher order cognition. Indeed, what exactly accounts for this relationship has been a major topic of inquiry in cognitive psychology for over 20 years (Engle & Oransky, 1999). Attempts to better understand this problem have shed considerable light on the role of WMC in a wide array of research domains. Specifically, research has shown that measures of WMC are related to complex learning (Kyllonen & Stephens, 1990), following directions (Engle, Carullo, & Collins, 1991), reasoning ability (Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Kyllonen & Christal, 1990), and vocabulary learning (Daneman & Green, 1986). Additionally, not only has WMC been implicated in higher order cognition – indeed, these correlations point to the utility of such a concept in the first place – but also now WMC is being implicated in other research domains. Working memory measures not only predict reading comprehension scores (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980), performance on standard achievement tests (i.e., SAT: Engle et al., 1999), and reasoning, but also seem to predict early onset Alzheimer's (Rosen, Bergeson, Putnam, Harwell, & Sunderland, 2002), the effects of alcohol consumption (Finn, 2002), and one's ability to deal with life-event stress (Klein & Boals, 2001). Thus, the utility of WMC is not merely limited to performance on high-level cognitive tasks, but is also important in a variety of situations that impact people on a day-to-day basis.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cognitive Limitations in Aging and Psychopathology , pp. 19 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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