... sensory register that does not get a person's attention disappears from the memory system. Unfortunately, people can attend to only a very small amount of information at any one time. In other words, attention has a limited capacity. For example, if you are in a room where several conversations are occurring at once, you can usually attend to-and therefore can learn from-only one of those conversations; this phenomenon is sometimes called the cocktail party phenomenon. Working memory, sometimes known as short-term-memory, is the component of memory where new information is held while it is mentally processed; in other words, it is a temporary "holding bin" for new information. Working memory is also where much of our thinking, or cognitive processing, occurs. It is where we try to make sense of a lecture, understand a textbook passage, or solve a problem. Generally speaking, working memory is the component that probably does most of ...

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