Limitations of working memory capacity: The cognitive and social consequences

This paper aimed to explore, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, the natural limitations of human cognition that determine our capabilities to deal with information overflow. These limitations are related mainly to the working memory system. This system is conceived to be composed of the storage components, which are responsible for active maintenance, and executive control that supervises the storage units. People differ in their working memory capacities, and because virtually every complex cognitive activity requires the temporal availability of a certain amount of cognitive representations, these differences are predictive of many outcomes. In the area of ‘cold’ cognition, these outcomes include intelligence and verbal reasoning, multitasking, language comprehension and verbal fluency, whereas in the area of ‘hot’ cognition, they include mentalising, stereotyping and self-control. Natural limitations in working memory capacity may be overcome (to some extent) through the training of working memory skills or the application of processing strategies (e.g. task simplification, using external environment as in situated or distributed cognition, changing a code of mental representation).