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The Uses of Working Memory

  • Chapter
Memory: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Abstract

G. Stanley Hall was a man of broad interests whose early theological training in no way blinded him to the exciting evolutionary ideas that were so influential at the time. For that reason, I like to think that he would approve of the topic I have chosen, working memory, since it touches on a wide range of other disciplines including developmental psychology, the psychology of education, and neuropsychology. My own involvement in the concept stems from a series of experiments carried out jointly with Graham Hitch on short-term memory, experiments that were aimed at answering the implicitly evolutionist question, “What is STM for?” I would like to describe some of the results of our pursuit, and to emphasize that it continues to be useful to bear in mind the question of evolutionary value in investigating the many phenomena that have been revealed by recent research on human memory.

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Authors
  1. Alan Baddeley
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Williams College, 02167, Williamstown, MA, USA

    Paul R. Solomon , George R. Goethals  & Colleen M. Kelley ,  & 

  2. Department of Psychology, Clemson University, 29631, Clemson, SC, USA

    Benjamin R. Stephens

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© 1989 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Baddeley, A. (1989). The Uses of Working Memory. In: Solomon, P.R., Goethals, G.R., Kelley, C.M., Stephens, B.R. (eds) Memory: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3500-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3500-2_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-8128-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3500-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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