Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Vergauwe, Evie; Langerock, Naomi

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2017.05.001

Cited by 49 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…In more recent reviews, this proposal has been defended by Cowan (2011) and has been criticized by Oberauer (2013) and the debate continues (e.g. Vergauwe & Langerock, 2017). If direct access to multiple objects is found to hold, then retrieval cannot be the limit for the results found here.…”

Section: Memory Encoding Limited Capacity At Encoding Means Insufficmentioning

confidence: 91%

Set-size effects in change detection depend on failures of retrieval and/or comparison and not on perception, encoding or storage

Moreland

Palmer

Boynton

2020

Preprint

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needs to be no more than 250 words (currently 250)Significance section needs to be no more than 100 words (currently 69) AbstractSet-size effects in change detection is often used to investigate the capacity limits of dividing attention. Such capacity limits have been attributed to a variety of processes including perception, memory encoding, memory storage, memory retrieval, comparison and decision.In this study, we investigated the locus of the effect of increasing set size from 1 to 2. To measure purely attentional effects and not other phenomena such as crowding, a precue was used to manipulate relevant set size and keep the display constant across conditions. The task was to detect a change in the orientation of 1 or 2 Gabor patterns. The locus of the capacity limits was determined by varying when observers were cued to the only stimulus that was relevant. We began by measuring the baseline set-size effect in an initial experiment. In the next experiment, a 100% valid postcue was added to test for an effect of decision. This postcue did not change the set-size effects. In the critical experiments, a 100% valid cue was provided during the retention interval between displays, or only one stimulus was presented in the second display (local recognition). For both of these conditions, there was little or no set-size effect. This pattern of results was found for both hard-to-discriminate stimuli typical of perception experiments and easy-to-discriminate stimuli typical of memory experiments.These results are consistent with capacity limits in memory retrieval, and/or comparison. For these set sizes, the results are not consistent with capacity limits in perception, memory encoding or memory storage. Set-Size Effects in Change Detection3 Significance SectionThe change detection paradigm is often used to demonstrate effects of divided attention. But it is not clear whether these effects are due to perception, memory, or judgment and decision. In this article, we present new evidence that the divided attention effect in change detection is due to limits in memory retrieval or comparison processes. These results are not consistent with limits in perception, memory encoding or memory storage.

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Section: Memory Encoding Limited Capacity At Encoding Means Insufficmentioning

confidence: 91%

Set-size effects in change detection depend on failures of retrieval and/or comparison and not on perception, encoding or storage

Moreland

Palmer

Boynton

2020

Preprint

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“…Refreshing is assumed to cycle across all presented items, and it is only prevented when participants engage in an attention-demanding task. Hence, refreshing is assumed to take place during an unfilled retention interval following presentation of all memoranda, and there is evidence supporting that assumption (Souza & Oberauer, in press;Vergauwe, Camos, & Barrouillet, 2014;Vergauwe & Langerock, 2017). Therefore, we should expect that participants attempted refreshing of all words in the distraction-last and blank-last conditions in Experiment 4.…”

Section: What Is Free Time Being Used For?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Time to process information in working memory improves episodic memory

Souza

Oberauer

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

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In simple-span tasks, participants encode items sequentially for immediate serial recall. Complexspan tasks are similar, except that items are interleaved with a distraction task. Whereas immediate memory is higher in simple than complex span, in tests of episodic long-term memory, better recall for words studied in complex than simple span has been observed (McCabe, 2008). This McCabe effect has been explained by assuming that distraction displace items from working memory, forcing people to covertly retrieve items after each distraction, thereby generating better episodic retrieval-cues than during simple span. Our experiments support an alternative hypothesis: individual words are attended to and processed longer in working memory in complex-span than in simple-span trials. We reduced the presentation rate of words in simple span, creating a "slow span" condition. Across four experiments, slow span improved episodic memory compared to simple span, and this benefit was larger than the McCabe effect.

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“…Recent studies have tested the serial refreshing hypothesis according to which spontaneous refreshing of a memory list operates serially, with the focus of attention cycling from one item to the next . An obvious way of implementing serial refreshing consists of refreshing the items of a memory list in a cumulative, forward order, that is, in the order of presentation starting with the first‐presented memory item, followed by the second‐presented memory item, etc.…”

Section: How Is Refreshing Of Memory Traces Implemented?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regardless of the way in which refreshing is implemented, the item that is represented in the focus of attention is assumed to be in a privileged state of heightened accessibility . The local effect of refreshing is thus the heightened accessibility of the just‐refreshed WM representation . The spontaneous refreshing reactivates these representations without modifying the nature of the involved representations.…”

Section: How Is Refreshing Of Memory Traces Implemented?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What is attentional refreshing in working memory?

Camos

Johnson

Loaiza

et al. 2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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116

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Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolution that introduced the computer metaphor to describe human cognitive functioning called for this system in charge of the temporary storage of incoming or retrieved information to permit its processing. In the past decades, one particular mechanism of maintenance, attentional refreshing, has attracted an increasing amount of interest in the field of working memory. However, this mechanism remains rather mysterious, and its functioning is conceived in very different ways across the literature. This article presents an up-to-date review on attentional refreshing through the joint effort of leading researchers in the domain. It highlights points of agreement and delineates future avenues of research.

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Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Abstract: Working Memory (WM) keeps information temporarily accessible for ongoing cognition.

Cited by 49 publications

References 71 publications

Set-size effects in change detection depend on failures of retrieval and/or comparison and not on perception, encoding or storage

Set-size effects in change detection depend on failures of retrieval and/or comparison and not on perception, encoding or storage

Time to process information in working memory improves episodic memory

What is attentional refreshing in working memory?

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