Working memory and consciousness:

Abstract

The view of working memory as a conscious process has allowed to define consciousness as the content of working memory. However, concerns have emerged over comparisons between consciousness and working memory. Although the relationship between these two study fields has been the matter of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, a theoretical review addressing the core elements of highly cited perspectives would enrich the discussion in this study area. This review focuses on three theoretical frameworks: 1) the multi-component model of working memory, 2) the global workspace theory, 3) the hierarchical framework. The multi-component model of working memory contributes a basic functional description on how mental representations remain on-line during complex cognitive processing. Thereby, the information exchange between the central executive and the episodic buffer, in one sense, and the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the other is given trough conscious processing. Likewise, the central executive controls and changes attention but the episodic buffer allows multimodal information availability.