Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Madison Madison, WI, USA.
Front Psychol. 2013 Jan 7;3:567. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00567. eCollection 2012.
A well-known characteristic of working memory (WM) is its limited capacity. The source of such limitations, however, is a continued point of debate. Developmental research is positioned to address this debate by jointly identifying the source(s) of limitations and the mechanism(s) underlying capacity increases. Here we provide a cross-domain survey of studies and theories of WM capacity development, which reveals a complex picture: dozens of studies from 50 papers show nearly universal increases in capacity estimates with age, but marked variation across studies, tasks, and domains. We argue that the full pattern of performance cannot be captured through traditional approaches emphasizing single causes, or even multiple separable causes, underlying capacity development. Rather, we consider WM capacity as a dynamic process that emerges from a unified cognitive system flexibly adapting to the context and demands of each task. We conclude by enumerating specific challenges for researchers and theorists that will need to be met in order to move our understanding forward.
工作记忆（WM）的一个显著特点是其有限的容量。然而，这种限制的来源仍然是一个持续存在的争议点。发展研究通过共同确定限制的来源和容量增加的机制，从而有能力解决这一争议。在这里，我们对 WM 容量发展的研究和理论进行了跨领域的调查，结果显示出一幅复杂的画面：来自 50 篇论文的数十项研究表明，容量估计值几乎普遍随年龄增长而增加，但研究、任务和领域之间存在明显差异。我们认为，通过传统方法强调单一原因，甚至多个可分离的原因，无法全面捕捉到表现的全貌，这些方法是无法解释容量发展的。相反，我们将 WM 容量视为一个动态过程，它源自一个灵活适应每个任务的背景和需求的统一认知系统。最后，我们列举了研究人员和理论家需要面对的具体挑战，以便推动我们的理解向前发展。
