title: Testing hypotheses about working memory capacity.
abstract: When an individual is engaged in sampling from a finite population, an assessment of their working memory for previously sampled objects is often desired. An extension of the classical occupancy distribution provides a framework for testing hypotheses about working memory capacity, based on a general model of working memory in which the individual retains a record of m previous inspections (and hence does not make the mistake of resampling these objects) and samples with replacement objects outside the current memory set. The buffer size m provides a common metric for assessing the effect of variables on performance in search tasks involving different numbers of items, or locations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Leicester, UK.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gillett
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D012153:Retention, Psychology