Imagine you are a security guard in one of those casino heist movies where your ability to recognize an emerging crime will depend on whether you notice a subtle change on one of the many security ...

Humans are known to rapidly adapt their mental processes and behavior based on feedback they receive from the world around them. For instance, some past studies have shown that people progressively ...

You know that feeling when you walk into a room and immediately forget why you came in? Maybe you were there to fetch your keys. On your way to the room, you were thinking about grabbing your keys.

Working memory refers to the memory you can consciously hold in your mind at any one instant—such as a phone number you just looked up. Most people can only hold about four totally independent items ...

Working memory is a form of memory that allows a person to temporarily hold a limited amount of information at the ready for immediate mental use. It is considered essential for learning, ...

We’ve all had the unfortunate experience of having to pull food packaging out of the garbage because we almost immediately forgot what temperature to set the oven on. At the same time, if someone ...

Do you ever wonder why some people can easily calculate a tip in their head or remember an address someone told them a few minutes earlier to plug into their GPS? The ability to remember small amounts ...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. You know that feeling when you walk into a room and immediately forget why ...