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There is no four-object limit on attention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2001

Greg Davis
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London WCIE 7HX, United [email protected] www.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/staff/gid.html

Abstract

The complex relationship between attention and STM forms a core issue in the study of human cognition, and Cowan's target article attempts, quite successfully, to elucidate an important part of this relationship. However, while I agree that aspects of STM performance may reflect the action mechanisms that we normally consider to subserve “attention” I shall argue here that attention is not subject to a fixed four-object capacity limit as Cowan suggests. Rather, performance in attention tasks as well as STM may be best accounted for in terms of decay and interference.

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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