In such situations secondary memory abilities will be needed to recover the information to facilitate processing. Furthermore, secondary memory abilities are needed in order to bring task-relevant information into the focus of attention so that it can be combined Baf-A1 solubility dmso with the current contents of the focus. Like capacity and attention control, secondary memory abilities are critical for

higher-order cognitive functioning to ensure that information that could not be actively maintained can nonetheless be accessed rapidly. The current results suggest that WM is not a unitary system, but rather is composed of multiple distinct, yet interacting, processes and that each of these processes is important for higher-order cognition. Specifically, the current results suggest that capacity, attention control, and secondary memory are all highly related yet distinct. This result is reminiscent of similar work by Miyake et al. (2000) suggesting that there separate, yet related processes of executive

functioning. Furthermore, the current results suggest that these three factors mediate the relation between WM storage and WM processing measures with gF. These results clearly point to the multifaceted nature of WM and further suggest that WM limitations can arise for a number of reasons. That is, rather than assuming that WM limitations are the result of a single factor Dabrafenib or process, the current work suggests that WM limitations can arise for a number of reasons. Specifically, individuals may have deficits SPTBN5 in capacity that limits the number of items that they can distinctly maintain. Other individuals may have deficits in the ability to control attention such that attention is constantly captured by irrelevant distractors allowing these distractors to gain access to WM. Yet, other individuals may have specific deficits in the ability to retrieve information from secondary memory which would prevent them from successfully recovering information that

had been recently displaced from the current focus of attention. The results from the cluster analysis support these notions by demonstrating that some individuals have deficits in one process, but strengths in another, while still other individuals have deficits in all processes or strengths in all (see also Unsworth, 2009). These results provide important evidence that WM limitations can be multifaceted and can potentially help resolve discrepancies in the literature where some studies find evidence for the importance of deficits in one (e.g., capacity) whereas other studies find evidence for the importance of another (e.g., attention control). These discrepancies could potentially come down to differences in the samples where one deficit is more represented than another.