The concept of working memory: introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Working memory has been the subject of considerable research over many decades, much carried out by educational psychologists. The limiting effect of working memory capacity on understanding, test performance and problem‐solving in the sciences became apparent in the 1980s and the implications of this are still being explored. This issue seeks to bring together some of the main findings from research and this introductory paper sets the scene for the six papers which follow.

Keywords:

• working memory
• science learning
• science performance

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully wishes to acknowledge the enormous support from the journal editor, and numerous reviewers as well as Dr Shagufta Chandi, who assisted greatly with final editing of many of the papers.