Two of the dominating tasks in the visual working memory (VWM) literature are the Delayed Estimation (DE) task and the Change Detection (CD) task. However, there are no studies that directly compared how participants' expectation to be tested in these tasks impacts memory formation. Here, three experiments interspersed DE and CD trials with identical displays until the reporting stage. During each session, the frequency of trials of each task was altered to manipulate expectations of which task would be required. Expectation of a DE task led to an increase in the number of fixations during encoding and to more precise estimation. By contrast, expectation of a CD trial did not modulate CD accuracy. These results suggest that the precision with which information is encoded into VWM differs between these two tasks. This has implications for current theoretical debates on VWM and underscores the importance of the typically overlooked effect of task type on memory performance. Public Significance StatementThe temporal retention and manipulation of visual information is typically termed visual working memory (VWM). Performance in VWM tasks is predictive of success in various real-life aspects such as educational achievements. The current study demonstrates the flexible and efficient nature of VWM-a task that requires more precision recruits more resources. The findings underscore the vast and largely overlooked role of task demands on working memory performance. Thus, caution should be exercised when making theoretical conclusions without taking into account task effects.
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