Is Working Memory Still Working? 1Copyright © 2001 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission from the original publication: . “Is Working Memory Still Working?” American Psychologist, 56, 849-864. This re-print publication is arranged in recognition of the conferral on Dr. Baddeley of the Aristotle Prize at the VIIth European Congress of Psychology, London, in July 2001, for his outstanding research on human working memory. The original publication in the American Psychologist related to Prof. Baddeley's receipt of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association in 2001.

Abstract

The current state of A.D. Baddeley and G.J. Hitch's (1974) multicomponent working memory model is reviewed. The phonological and visuospatial subsystems have been extensively investigated, leading both to challenges over interpretation of individual phenomena and to more detailed attempts to model the processes underlying the subsystems. Analysis of the controlling central executive has proved more challenging, leading to a proposed clarification in which the executive is assumed to be a limited capacity attentional system, aided by a newly postulated fourth system, the episodic buffer. Current interest focuses most strongly on the link between working memory and long-term memory and on the processes allowing the integration of information from the component subsystems. The model has proved valuable in accounting for data from a wide range of participant groups under a rich array of task conditions. Working memory does still appear to be working.