The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory

The past 10 years have brought near-revolutionary changes in psychological theories about short-term memory, with similarly great advances in the neurosciences. Here, we critically examine the major psychological theories (the "mind") of short-term memory and how they relate to evidence about underlying brain mechanisms. We focus on three features that must be addressed by any satisfactory theory of short-term memory. First, we examine the evidence for the architecture of short-term memory, with special attention to questions of capacity and how--or whether--short-term memory can be separated from long-term memory. Second, we ask how the components of that architecture enact processes of encoding, maintenance,…