Working Memory Capacity as Executive Attention
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)
Summary
This review paper argues that working memory (WM) capacity is fundamentally a measure of executive attention rather than a simple limit on short-term storage. Engle posits that individual differences in WM capacity reflect the ability to control attention, specifically to maintain task goals and inhibit distracting information, rather than the sheer volume of items that can be held in memory. This perspective is motivated by the strong correlation between WM performance and higher-order cognitive tasks, such as reading comprehension, reasoning, and fluid intelligence, which cannot be explained by domain-specific skills or storage limits alone. To support this claim, the paper reviews evidence from various WM capacity tasks, including reading-span, operation-span, and counting-span tasks. In these tasks, participants perform an attention-demanding operation (e.g., solving arithmetic problems or counting targets) while simultaneously retaining unrelated items for later recall. The paper highlights that performance on these tasks predicts success in diverse real-world activities, suggesting a common underlying construct. Crucially, Engle distinguishes WM from traditional short-term memory (STM) by noting that WM tasks involve active maintenance against interference, whereas STM tasks like digit span rely heavily on rehearsal and chunking. Structural equation modeling analyses further demonstrate that WM capacity shares variance with general fluid intelligence, whereas STM does not, indicating that WM reflects a mechanism of executive attention. Empirical evidence from specific attention tasks reinforces this view. In proactive interference studies, low-WM-capacity individuals showed greater recall loss across trials compared to high-capacity individuals, indicating a reduced ability to suppress irrelevant prior information. In antisaccade tasks, which require inhibiting the natural tendency to look at a cue, low-span subjects were significantly slower and more likely to follow the misleading cue than high-span subjects. Similarly, in Stroop tasks, low-span individuals made substantially more errors on incongruent trials when the context strongly primed the incorrect response, demonstrating difficulty in maintaining the task goal against competing response tendencies. Finally, in dichotic-listening tasks, low-span subjects were far more likely to notice their name in an ignored ear, revealing a deficit in blocking distracting information. The significance of these findings lies in redefining WM capacity as a domain-free executive-attention system. The paper concludes that WM is not merely about storage size but about the ability to use attention to maintain information in an active state and inhibit interference. This executive attention mechanism is closely linked to general fluid intelligence and explains why WM capacity predicts performance across a wide range of complex cognitive tasks. By framing WM as executive attention, the paper provides a unified explanation for individual differences in higher-order cognition, emphasizing the role of attentional control in managing distraction and maintaining task goals.
Key finding
Working memory capacity is fundamentally a measure of executive attention that enables individuals to maintain task goals and suppress interfering information, rather than simply reflecting the amount of information that can be stored.
Methodology
review
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via openalex_abstract on 2026-05-08 (2 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 8 | 2026-06-06 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | openalex | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-08 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.