It would appear that all of us have very similar amounts of working memory space. It gets very complicated very fast, and there are some aspects that vary a lot. But in general, its capacity appears to be the bottleneck of fluid intelligence (and a lot of crystallized intelligence might be, in fact, learned adaptations for getting around this bottleneck).
How superior would it be? There are some strong indication that adding more “chunks” to the working space would be somewhat akin to adding more qubits to a quantum computer: if having four “chunks” (one of the most popular estimates for an average young adult) gives you 2^4 units of fluid intelligence, adding one more would increase your intelligence to 2^5 units. The implications seem clear.
I’m curious as to why this comment has been downvoted. Kalla seems to be making an essentially uncontroversial and correct summary of what many researchers think is the relevance of working memory size
(Note: it is not downvoted as I write this comment.)
First let me say that I have enjoyed kalla’s recent contributions to this site, and hope that the following won’t come across as negative. But to answer your question, I at least question both the uncontrovertiality and correctness of the summary, as well as the inference that more working memory increases abilities exponentially quickly. Kalla and I discussed some of this above and he doesn’t think that his claims hinge on specific facts about working memory, so most of this is irrelevant at this point, but might answer your question.
EDIT: Also, by correctness I mainly mean that I think our (us being cognitive scientists) understanding of this issue is much less clear than kalla’s post implies. His summary reflects my understanding of the current working theory, but I don’t think the current working theory is generally expected to be correct.
It would appear that all of us have very similar amounts of working memory space. It gets very complicated very fast, and there are some aspects that vary a lot. But in general, its capacity appears to be the bottleneck of fluid intelligence (and a lot of crystallized intelligence might be, in fact, learned adaptations for getting around this bottleneck).
How superior would it be? There are some strong indication that adding more “chunks” to the working space would be somewhat akin to adding more qubits to a quantum computer: if having four “chunks” (one of the most popular estimates for an average young adult) gives you 2^4 units of fluid intelligence, adding one more would increase your intelligence to 2^5 units. The implications seem clear.
I’m curious as to why this comment has been downvoted. Kalla seems to be making an essentially uncontroversial and correct summary of what many researchers think is the relevance of working memory size
(Note: it is not downvoted as I write this comment.)
First let me say that I have enjoyed kalla’s recent contributions to this site, and hope that the following won’t come across as negative. But to answer your question, I at least question both the uncontrovertiality and correctness of the summary, as well as the inference that more working memory increases abilities exponentially quickly. Kalla and I discussed some of this above and he doesn’t think that his claims hinge on specific facts about working memory, so most of this is irrelevant at this point, but might answer your question.
EDIT: Also, by correctness I mainly mean that I think our (us being cognitive scientists) understanding of this issue is much less clear than kalla’s post implies. His summary reflects my understanding of the current working theory, but I don’t think the current working theory is generally expected to be correct.