Executive Attention, Working Memory Capacity, and a Two-Factor Theory of Cognitive Control

Abstract

This chapter describes the nature of working memory capacity (WMC), and addresses the nature of WMC limitations, their effects on higher order cognitive tasks, their relationship to attention control and general fluid intelligence, and their neurological substrates. Much of work explores these issues in the context of individual differences in WMC and the cause of those individual differences. Measures of WMC are highly reliable and highly valid indicators of some construct of clear relevance to feral cognition. Macroanalytic studies have demonstrated that the construct reflected by WMC tasks has a strong relationship with gF above and beyond what these tasks share with simple span tasks. The conflict might also arise from stimulus representations of competing strength. This two-factor model fits with current thinking about the role of two brain structures: the prefrontal cortex as important to the maintenance of information in an active and easily accessible state and the anterior cingulate as important to the detection and resolution of conflict.