Mechanisms of working memory capacity limits and their development

描述(由申请者提供)：这是一个第25年重新提交的项目，该项目调查了工作记忆(WM)是如何随着小学和成年的发展而增长的。工作记忆是一种在脑海中执行认知任务的少量记忆。该提案的大部分内容都已被重写，并将评审者的意见牢记于心。他们赞扬了过去的进步；它有助于建立人类大脑的一个关键组成部分，一个与注意力相关的工作记忆(WM)的中央组成部分，限于几个有意义的单位或块。然而，审查员强调了先前提案存在的两个普遍问题。(1)提出的研究没有足够的理论依据，不够清楚 (2)研究方法被认为过于渐进，在理论上不够大胆，在过去的进展之外没有开辟足够的新天地。作为回应，这项拟议的研究现在提出了一个核心问题：水资源管理能力发展增加的机制是什么？尽管Miller(1956)讨论了记忆中有意义的语块数量的容量限制，但自那时以来，研究人员大多回避了这一话题，因为测量语块和区分工作记忆不同组成部分的容量非常困难。然而，语块容量对于理解是至关重要的，因为它可能决定人类思维的允许复杂性。将区块产能与其他流程分开是一项显著而困难的成就，这一成就越来越受欢迎(例如，2001年考恩的审查被引用了1800多次，指出了一种恒定的产能机制)。到目前为止，我们的发展调查被证明在建立这样一个概念方面特别重要，即存在一种与其他助记过程分开的核心工作记忆能力(例如，将项目组合成更大块的能力，排除分散注意力的信息，口头排练项目，或快速刷新项目的能力)。仔细的发展性调查可以在其他技能保持不变的情况下突出一项技能的进步。尚未完成的是，首先，建立研究结果的普遍性。到目前为止，我们只在视觉阵列探测识别的情况下考察了选择性注意和复述保持不变的能力，而我们只在言语自由回忆的情况下检验了组块形成保持不变的能力。因此，当务之急是确定小学时期培养的工作记忆能力是只包括特定领域的商店，还是包括中央的、与注意力相关的核心工作管理教师，在识别和回忆测试中可以观察到，我包括语言和视觉材料。发展性研究可以帮助我们理解核心容量限制是如何取决于注意力的，项目是同时持有还是顺序刷新，以及核心工作记忆是否基于对一定数量的项目或特征的保留。我们结合了行为和神经成像方法以及数学建模来理解正常的工作记忆发展，因为它指导我们理解(1)认知发展和(2)我们可能如何治疗认知缺陷，即哪些基本技能可能需要培训或其他补救。 与公共健康相关：长期的研究目标是了解儿童发展和成人工作记忆的功能，包括暂时记住的几个项目，以完成认知任务。工作记忆之所以重要，是因为它在语言理解和解决问题方面发挥着关键作用，而且它缺乏精神分裂症、语言障碍、注意力缺陷障碍和其他学习障碍等障碍和病理。最近的研究指出，训练有障碍的人的工作记忆是有好处的，如果我们真正了解工作记忆的基本容量限制，以及它们是如何在童年发展起来的，治疗方法可能会得到改善。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a resubmission for a 25th year of a project investigating how working memory (WM), the small amount held in mind to carry out cognitive tasks, increases with development in the elementary school years and to adulthood. Much of the proposal has been rewritten with reviewers' comments taken to heart. They lauded the past progress; it helps establish a key component of the human mind, an attention-related, central component of working memory (WM) limited to a few meaningful units, or chunks. The reviewers, however, highlighted 2 general problems with the previously proposal. (1) There was insufficient theoretical rationale for the studies that were proposed, with an insufficiently clear new direction for the research, and (2) the research approach was perceived as too incremental and not theoretically bold enough, not breaking enough new ground beyond past progress. In response, the proposed research now contributes to one central question: What are the mechanisms of the developmental increase in WM capacity? Although Miller (1956) discussed capacity limits in terms of the number of meaningful chunks recalled, researchers since then have mostly avoided this topic because of the great difficulty of measuring chunks and distinguishing capacity from different components of WM. Yet, chunk capacity is critical to understand as it may determine the permissible complexity of human thought. Isolating chunk capacity from other processes has been a striking and difficult achievement, which has gained popularity (e.g., the review by Cowan, 2001, cited over 1,800 times, pointing to a constant-capacity mechanism). Our developmental investigations so far have proven especially important in establishing the notion that there is a core WM capacity that is separate from other mnemonic processes (e.g., the ability to combine items to form larger chunks, exclude distracting information, rehearse items verbally, or refresh them at a rapid rate). Careful developmental investigation can highlight the improvement in one skill with others held constant. What has not been accomplished yet is, first, to establish the generality of the findings. So far we have examined capacity with selective attention and rehearsal held constant only for visual array probe recognition, whereas we have examined capacity with chunk formation held constant only for verbal free recall. The first order of business is therefore to determine whether the WM faculties that develop during the elementary school years include only domain-specific stores, or also a central, attention-related, core WM faculty observable in tests of recognition and recall, i both verbal and visual materials. Developmental investigation can help us to understand how a core capacity limit is dependent on attention, whether items are held concurrently or refreshed sequentially, and whether a core WM is based on retention of a certain number of items or features. We incorporate behavioral and neuroimaging methods and math modeling to understand normal WM development, as it guides our understanding of (1) cognitive development and (2) how we might treat cognitive deficits, i.e., which basic skills might need training or other remediation. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The long-term research objective is to understand the child development and adult function of working memory, comprising the few items held in mind temporarily to complete cognitive tasks. Working memory is important because it plays a key role in language comprehension and problem-solving, and because it is deficient in disorders and pathologies including schizophrenia, language disorders, attention deficit disorders, and other learning disabilities. Recent research points to benefits of training working memory in people with disorders, and treatments could be improved if we truly understood the basic capacity limits of working memory and how they develop in childhood.