ABSTRACT
Several influential authors have closely identified short-term or working memory with consciousness. William James (1918, pp. 643-689) described memory as a way of bringing back past conscious experiences. In the case of primary memory, there is nothing to bring back because ‘it was never lost; its date was never cut off in consciousness from that of the immediately present moment’ (1918, p. 647). He argued that our ‘effective’ consciousness is of material that is retained in primary memory. Likewise, Atkinson and Shiffrin explicitly stated that they ‘tend to equate the short-term store with “consciousness”, that is, the thoughts and information of which we are currently aware can be considered part of the contents of the short-term store’ (1971, p. 83). Baddeley argued that consciousness ‘operates through working memory’ (1993, p. 21). This chapter introduces some key issues in consciousness studies and discusses the use of the WM model to guide research into conscious experience.
