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Abstract:
Verbal working memory (VWM) has become a major topic of
research in cognitive neuroscience over the past decade. Stimulated
by theoretical proposals of Baddeley et al. (1974, 1975, 1986),
cognitive neuroscientists have demonstrated the existence and
identified the brain loci of several VWM components, including
phonological storage, subvocal rehearsal, and the "central
executive" (e.g., Paulesu et al., 1993; Petrides et al., 1993;
Cohen et al., 1994; Awh et al., 1996; Schumacher et al., 1996).
Nevertheless, much remains to be learned about the algorithmic
operations of these components and the neural mechanisms that
implement them. In order for this crucial further progress to take
place, detailed formal modeling rather than loose qualitative
theorizing is needed. Consequently, using the Executive-Process
Interactive Control (EPIC) architecture developed by Meyer and
Kieras (1997), we have begun formulating precise computational
models of VWM. Our models provide explicit thorough specifications
of the symbolic codes, memory stores, maintenance activities,
retrieval operations, and executive processes associated with human
performance in prototypical paradigms such as the serial
memory-span task. With these specifications, accurate quantitative
fits to representative empirical data sets can be obtained. As a
result, new insights from our research may significantly stimulate
future cognitive neuroscience studies of VWM.
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