At Starbucks, a cup of coffee costs $2.82. To use exact change, you must hold the number 2.82 in your head while sorting through your wallet and calculating what coins you have. To be successful in actively processing this information, you must keep the information maintained in short-term storage by using your __________.

In psychology, working memory is a cognitive system that is part of short term memory and has a limited capacity. This memory is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing.

It also deals with cognitive tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem-solving.

In this example, you know that a cup of coffee costs $2.82 dollars and want to use exact change, so you need to hold the number 2.82 in your head while sorting through your wallet and calculating what coins you have and do the sums.

You need to use your short term memory, but in particular you need to deal with mental arithmetic in a short term and temporarily hold the information available (2.82 dollars).

Thus, you must keep the information maintained in short-term storage by using your working memory.