From the archive: How working memory works

'Working memory is used every waking moment to keep track of thoughts, actions, and rapid changes around us. Without it, everyday functioning would be impossible. In April 1999, I wrote an article for The Psychologist on how working memory works, what brain regions are involved, and what we can and cannot do when it goes wrong.

I focused on developments of a theory of working memory originally outlined in 1974 by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch, and in 2024 a conference will mark the 50th anniversary of that seminal paper. Over those five decades, many thousands of research papers and dozens of books have emerged.

As shown in two recent books I co-edited (Working Memory: State of the Science in 2021; Memory in Science for Society in 2023), there have been substantial advances in understanding cognition and brain organisation for working memory.

These advances have led to widespread applications, for example in child and lifespan education, language learning, adult ageing, and assessment of cognitive impairments following brain damage, Alzheimer's and other brain diseases.

Along with its success in applications, this extensive research also has led to theoretical debates that have tended to multiply rather than coalesce, thereby hindering the development of consensus in further scientific understanding.

The 2021 'State of the Science' book reflected this scientific diversity, and in 2023 I published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology showing how  'adversarial collaboration' among researchers who disagree might help resolve rather than perpetuate debate indefinitely, and not only for the topic of working memory.'

Robert Logie is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh