The Role of Working Memory in Higher-Level Cognition Domain-Specific versus Domain-General Perspectives

1
The Role of Working Memory in Higher-Level
CognitionDomain-Specific versus Domain-General
Perspectives

• David Z. Hambrick,
• Michael J.Kane, and Randall W.Engle

2
Context

• Introduction
• An Individual-Differences Perspective On Working
  Memory(WM)
• Which Hypothesis is correct?
• Microanalytic Research
• The Role of Strategies?
• Macroanalytic Research
• Verbal versus Spatial WM?
• Toward a Broader Perspective on the Role of WM in
  Higher-Level Cognition

3
Introduction

• Working Memory

Working Memory, 1992, Baddeley
Working Memory and language, 2003, Baddeley
4
An Individual-Differences Perspective On Working
Memory(WM)

• Measuring individual difference
• Reading/operation/counting/spatial span
• Two observation
• WM tasks are reliable
• Individual difference is correlated with
  Higher-level Cognition.
• General or Specific WM ?

5
Which Hypothesis is correct?

• Two hypothesis
• Domain-specific factor
• Reading process reading span task, etc.
• Domain-general factor
• Attention control / Inhibitory process

6
View in Research
WM

• Microanalytic Research
• WM tasks vs. elementary tasks.
• Macroanalytic Research
• WM vs. Individual difference (Cognition)
• WM may be a component of gf

Elementarytask
Elementarytask
gf
WM
7
The Role of Strategies?

• The main effect of strategy use may be on the
  total variance in WM performance.
• But it Not mean differential strategy use by
  low-spans and high-spans accounts for the
  relationship between WM span and higher-level
  cognition.

8
Toward a Broader Perspective on the Role of WM in
Higher-Level Cognition

• Domain-general hypothesis
• Microanalytic
• Individual difference Factor is elementary
  attention.
• Macroanalytic
• WM plays important role in cognition.
• WM bottom-up
• Integrating coming information with preexisting
  knowledge.