ABSTRACT
The chapter is concerned with modularity and the general logic of treating working memory within a modular approach. It begins with the nature and logic of modularity, including a brief introduction to the distinction between modules and faculties, to be developed in the following chapter, and then seeks to clarify some common misunderstandings of modularity, involving interaction between systems, neural plasticity, and the misleading concept of a genetic “blueprint” for modules. It then discusses the relation between modularity and the popular but controversial dual-process views of the mind. The subsequent discussion of working memory within the modular mind focuses, first, on the idea of information availability and its relation to activation and then on some existing approaches to working memory that are (somewhat) related to the view that is developed here, especially that of Ray Jackendoff, whose general cognitive/linguistic theory of the mind is the starting point for the Modular Cognition Framework to be discussed below.
