Working memory is important for maintaining critical information in an active state to guide future behavior. The executive-attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC; Engle & Kane, 2004) argues that goal maintenance is important for response selection when stimuli are associated with competing responses. Braver, Burgess, and Gray (2007) have labeled this type of preparatory activity proa...

The links between the resources available for cognitive control and the ability to recover and maintain episodic content were investigated by contrasting an ERP index of recollection (the left-parietal ERP old/new effect) with a measure of working memory capacity (WMC). Participants were given the O-Span measure of WMC and completed a retrieval task in which they had to make responses on one ke...

Two experiments examined the relations among working memory capacity (WMC), congruency-sequence effects, proportion-congruency effects, and the color-word Stroop effect to test whether congruency-sequence effects might inform theoretical claims regarding WMC's prediction of Stroop interference. In Experiment 1, subjects completed either a high-congruency or low-congruency Stroop task that restr...

This paper is about the nature of working memory capacity (WMC), and it will address 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 our work has ex­ plored these issues in the context of individual differences in WMC and the cause of those individual ...

A large correlational study took a latent-variable approach to the generality of executive control by testing the individual-differences structure of executive-attention capabilities and assessing their prediction of schizotypy, a multidimensional construct (with negative, positive, disorganized, and paranoid factors) conveying risk for schizophrenia. Although schizophrenia is convincingly link...

We tested whether the goal to attain normative superiority over other students, referred to as performance-approach goals, is particularly distractive for high-Working Memory Capacity (WMC) students-that is, those who are used to being high achievers. Indeed, WMC is positively related to high-order cognitive performance and academic success, a record of success that confers benefits on high-WMC...

According to the Attentional Control Theory of Anxiety (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos & Calvo, 2007), worry, a crucial component of anxiety, impairs task performance outcome(s) through its direct effect on working memory capacity (WMC), by using up the limited resources available for performance thus reducing attentional control. We tested this hypothesis in the current study by examining the caus...

Much prior research has shown that retrieval of information from long-term memory (LTM) can influence many aspects of complex cognition in situ. However, research also has shown that not all individuals manage information retrieved from LTM in equivalent fashions. Specifically, high working memory capacity (WMC) individuals have been shown to be better able to manage not only what information i...

People’s minds sometimes wander from ongoing activities. Although these experiences can be pleasant and useful, they are often unintentional and precipitate mistakes. In this article, we adopt an individual-differences perspective in considering unwanted mind wandering as an indicator of both momentary failures of and enduring deficiencies in executive-control functions. We describe research th...

The present study tested the dual-component model of working memory capacity (WMC) by examining estimates of primary memory and secondary memory from an immediate free recall task. Participants completed multiple measures of WMC and general intellectual ability as well as multiple trials of an immediate free recall task. It was demonstrated that there are 2 sources of variance (primary memory a...