We are talking about WM as a broad ability factor! Comment on Burgoyne, Frank, and Macnamara (2024)

Burgoyne, Frank, and Macnamara (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2024) argued for a separation of updating and working memory factors. We agree that understanding variance across multiple different task classes and measures for the assessment of working memory is crucial. It is a strength of their contribution to include many and diverse subjects and also to study the convergent relation with fluid intelligence. In our view, however, their analysis and interpretation of findings is partly flawed, and other conclusions ought to be drawn from their data. More specifically, we argue that 1) the disengagement hypothesis is hardly convincing to account for their results, and 2) a reanalysis of the data supports other models more than the models put forward by Burgoyne et al. (2024).