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Toward an integrated account of working memory and language
Author(s)
Date Issued
2022
Publisher
Cambridge University Press.
Citation
In Schwieter, J., & Wen, Z. (eds.). 2022. The Cambridge handbook of working memory and language (pp. 909-927). Cambridge University Press.
Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
According to George Miller (1956), a pioneer of the “cognitive revolution”’
and proponent of the buzzword concept of the “magical number seven,”
cognitive science in the modern sense had only started in the 1950s and
gradually took shape in the mid-1970s. Based on Miller’s (2003) historical
account, cognitive science as a scientific field of study originally comprised
six core disciplines, spanning psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience, as
well as anthropology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Over the last
half-century, cognitive scientists have probed into the underlying mechanisms and processes of human cognition, encompassing perception, attention, consciousness, reasoning, planning, learning, and memory, among
many other topics. The six constituting disciplines have all flourished and
complement each other, giving rise to a new set of interdisciplinary
research agendas subsuming language acquisition and cognitive
development, psycholinguistics and language processing, second language
acquisition and bilingualism/multilingualism, and so forth.
Meanwhile, the concept of working memory had also made its debut
appearance some 60 years ago (Miller et al., 1960, p. 65). But then, with the
advent of the seminal model of working memory by the British cognitive
psychologists Baddeley and Hitch (1974), ensuing research enthusiasm into
its nature, structure, and implications for essential facets of human cognition has grown exponentially. Expanding waves of research endeavors from
laboratories across the Atlantic (Andrade, 2001) have given rise to the
propagation of a multitude of theoretical perspectives and models of
working memory (Baddeley, 2012; Conway et al., 2007; Cowan, 2017;
Logie et al.,, 2021; Miyake & Shah, 1999). A majority of these influentialworking memory models are also featured in this current handbook, particularly in Part II, and they have been augmented with a particular focus
on their unique ramifications for language acquisition and processing
domains, as well as language impairments and intervention issues.
Building on these emerging patterns and insights gleaned from strands of
previous research, we aim, in this concluding chapter, to briefly summarize
the progress that has been made in both working memory and language
sciences, with a view to further aligning putative working memory components and processes with nuanced language acquisition domains and
processing activities. These reviews then culminate in an integrated
account of working memory and an operational taxonomy for its implementations in future language and bilingualism research. It is hoped that
through such an integrated account, we will not just reflect on the fruitful
results of previous and current endeavors by key laboratories and scholars
in the multiple fields of cognitive science, but also will prompt new and
upcoming researchers from different disciplines to collaborate and contribute to the “working memory-language” enterprise (Wen, 2016).
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