Working Memory and Stock Trading at Fidelity.com

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Working Memory and Stock Trading at Fidelity.com
In his well-known book “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” Oliver Sacks (Sacks, 1998) describes a man who can see, but not interpret what he sees: shown a glove, the man calls it a “receptacle with five protuberances” – people see not just with their eyes, but their brain as well – perception involves a whole and purposive cognitive process (Duric et al., 2002, p.1286) and this paper will cite research that shows how Working Memory (WM) is a central component of this purposive cognitive process and how it goes above and beyond perception to impact behavior and adaptation. John Sweller highlights the peculiar nature of human cognitive architecture with the point that WM is limited in its ability to process new material but it is massive in its ability to process previously learned complex information in conjunction with Long Term Memory (LTM) thus enabling human beings to perform simple and routine tasks at one extreme while helping them scale intellectual heights at the other extreme (Sweller, 2003, p.215). The last few decades have seen cognitive scientists associating emotional modulation into the computational models of learning and retention – traditionally associated with memory – thus bringing in emotion, anxiety and motivation into the framework of cognitive architecture (Lang, Davis, & Ohman, 2000). This paper will begin by presenting existing research on Working Memory and its properties like capacity and duration. The paper will also talk about the emotional aspect of cognition as it falls under the purview of working memory under high cognitive load, look at Cognitive Load Theory and also focus on anxiety and motivation.
The stock market crash of 2008 in which the U...

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