Working memory is the brain’s system for holding information online while it manipulates it to solve a problem. Many higher abilities planning, decision making, problem solving, and language depend upon working memory. And this wonderful mechanism can easily get filled up when we are solving a tricky problem in our head say, multiplying 23 by 57 or trying to do too many things at once.
In the British experiment, researchers asked the participants to perform a task requiring selective attention while, simultaneously, attempting to remember a sequence of five digits. The selective attention task was to identify the profession of a well known person whose name was flashed on a screen along with a face.
