A general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally, clarifying the nature of human intelligence.

In The Working Mind, Juan Pascual-Leone and Janice M. Johnson propose a general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally and by doing so clarifies the nature of human intelligence. Pascual-Leone and Johnson explain "from within" (that is, from a subject's own processing perspective) cognitive developmental stages of growth, describing key causal factors that can account for the emergence of the working mind as a functional totality. Among these factors is a maturationally growing mental attention.

Juan Pascual-Leone's profile page

Janice M. Johnson's profile page

Juan Pascual-Leone is Professor of Psychology Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto. Once a student of Jean Piaget, he is a founder of neo-Piagetian approaches to cognitive development. Janice M. Johnson is Associate Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University. Pascual-Leone and Johnson are Codirectors of the Developmental Processes Laboratory at York University.

“Pascual-Leone’s magnum opus....I view the book as a grand research program involving many hypotheses that need to be tested....It is now the turn of the researchers, prospective doctoral students and their supervisors to operationalize constructs and hypotheses in their own preferred mode or code and test them using new methods of research which are currently available.”
—Cognitive Development​