WM raises issues of computational complexity which have so far been ignored. If working memory is the set of concepts that are currently being matched against each other, then the complexity of the matching is probably n^2, If it is the set of concepts all permutations of which are being matched against variables in rules, the complexity is n!. It’s easy to imagine cognitive architectures in which the computational capacity needed to handle 9 items in WM would be orders of magnitude higher than that needed to handle 5. I suspect that’s why our WM is so limited, particularly in light of the fact that WM appears to be highly correlated with intelligence (according to Michael Vassar).
WM raises issues of computational complexity which have so far been ignored. If working memory is the set of concepts that are currently being matched against each other, then the complexity of the matching is probably n^2, If it is the set of concepts all permutations of which are being matched against variables in rules, the complexity is n!. It’s easy to imagine cognitive architectures in which the computational capacity needed to handle 9 items in WM would be orders of magnitude higher than that needed to handle 5. I suspect that’s why our WM is so limited, particularly in light of the fact that WM appears to be highly correlated with intelligence (according to Michael Vassar).
We touched on how important WM is to intelligence last time, too, and there was some dispute. I think we need to find some results in the literature.