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Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
The number and quality of representations in working memory
1UC-Davis Center for Mind & Brain, 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, CA 95618, USA. wwzhang@ucdavis.edu
Psychological Science
|October 12, 2011
Summary
Working memory capacity is limited by the number of items, not a flexible resource. Quality cannot be traded for quantity within working memory itself.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Working memory theories propose either flexible resource allocation (quality vs. quantity trade-off) or strict item limits.
- Distinguishing between these models is crucial for understanding cognitive capacity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To empirically test whether working memory capacity allows trading representation quality for quantity.
- To investigate if such trade-offs occur at working memory or earlier processing stages.
Main Methods:
- Participants were incentivized to manipulate the number and quality of stored representations.
- Behavioral experiments assessed performance under varying quantity and quality demands.
Main Results:
- No evidence found for a quality-quantity trade-off within working memory.
- Evidence suggests trade-offs are possible at earlier perceptual or attentional stages.
Conclusions:
- Working memory capacity is best described as a strict item limit, not a flexible resource.
- This finding challenges flexible-resource theories and supports limited-item models of working memory.
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