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Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
An assessment of fixed-capacity models of visual working memory
Jeffrey N Rouder1, Richard D Morey, Nelson Cowan
1Department of Psychological Sciences, 210 McAlester Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. rouderj@missouri.edu
Abstract:
Visual working memory is often modeled as having a fixed number of slots. We test this model by assessing the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) of participants in a visual-working-memory change-detection task. ROC plots yielded straight lines with a slope of 1.0, a tell-tale characteristic of all-or-none mnemonic representations. Formal model assessment yielded evidence highly consistent with a discrete fixed-capacity model of working memory for this task.

